Gene Regulation and Epigenetics · USMLE Step 1

During differentiation of stem cells into a specific tissue type, epigenetic regulation is critical mainly because:

  1. It permanently mutates DNA to create tissue-specific gene variants
  2. It silences or activates gene sets for that cell type, not the sequence
  3. It physically deletes genes irrelevant to the lineage from the genome
  4. It increases the overall rate of DNA replication in the cell
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Correct answer: It silences or activates gene sets for that cell type, not the sequence

Epigenetic regulation enables stable activation of lineage-specific genes and silencing of irrelevant ones by altering chromatin structure, allowing differentiation without changing the nucleotide sequence.

Difficulty: Medium Question 13 of 20

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