Genome-wide approaches to studying chromatin modifications

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Abstract
Chromatin modifications have been shown to have a profound impact on the regulation of gene expression. Epigenomes consist of the ensemble of all chromatin modifications in any given cell type, including DNA methylation, post-translational histone modifications, nucleosome positioning, histone variants, noncoding RNAs and three-dimensional chromatin architecture. New technologies, which allow for the profiling of chromatin modifications on a genome-wide scale, are providing researchers with comprehensive views of epigenomes. Genome-scale data sets for epigenetic phenomena allow for the use of bioinformatic methods to study epigenetics. Different functional regions of the genome are associated with distinct patterns of histone modifications and these patterns, in turn, can be used to annotate the functional elements in the genome.