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When faced with a competitive threat, two companies took diametrically opposite approaches. Both were ultimately successful, but Genzyme's decision proved to be the cleaner and cheaper option.
High-throughput technologies are enabling epigenetic modifications to be mapped on a genome-wide scale, but whether such knowledge can be rapidly translated into biomedical applications remains unclear.
The NIH Roadmap Epigenomics Mapping Consortium aims to produce a public resource of epigenomic maps for stem cells and primary ex vivo tissues selected to represent the normal counterparts of tissues and organ systems frequently involved in human disease.
Epigenomics provides the context for understanding the function of genome sequence, analogous to the functional anatomy of the human body provided by Vesalius a half-millennium ago. Much of the seemingly inconclusive genetic data related to common diseases could therefore become meaningful in an epigenomic context.