Epigenetic reprogramming during wound healing: loss of polycomb-mediated silencing may enable upregulation of repair genes

Epigenetics is an exciting and growing area as can be seen by the increase in research especially in recent years. One area of epigenetics research that is seeing growth is in wound healing. Why would this area be important, especially when you compare it with research related to cancer? Just to give an idea, in USA there are 5 to 7 million people afflicted with chronic wounds and this causes a massive strain on the healthcare services with an annual cost of about US$20 billion. In this sense the importance of research done on the area of Epigenetic reprogramming during wound healing becomes clear, with potential use in the area of gene therapy.
The research shows the un-silencing of repair genes by a group of proteins in cells at the wound-edge. These proteins called the polycomb group (PcG) proteins normally silence the repair genes by methylation of H3 histone protein on the chromatin. During the occurrence of wounds the PcG proteins is downregulated and the repair genes are able to help repair the wound.
Better understanding of wound healing mechanisms may possibly help millions of people have a better quality of life.