Decoding liver injury: A regulatory role for histone modifications.

As a primary metabolic, endocrine, immune-regulatory, and detoxification organ in the human body, the liver is constantly exposed to various stressors. Nutritional, humoral, viral, and/or chemical challenges act either singularly or combinatorially to inflict injuries on the liver. In a complex process of fencing off these injurious signals the liver undergoes profound morphological and functional alterations paralleling a shift in cellular transcriptome. The epigenetic machinery, including histone/DNA modifying enzymes, chromatin remodeling proteins, and non-coding regulatory RNAs, plays an important role in liver injury programming transcriptional events, a clear understanding of which holds the key to devising effective interventional solutions. Here, we summarize recent advances in the studies on epigenetic regulation of liver injury focusing on the role of histone modifications. This article is part of a Directed Issue entitled: Epigenetics dynamics in development and disease.