{"id":221688,"date":"2025-09-10T19:16:26","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T00:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/study-finds-cell-memory-can-be-more-like-a-dimmer-dial-than-an-on-off-switch"},"modified":"2025-09-10T19:16:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T00:16:26","slug":"study-finds-cell-memory-can-be-more-like-a-dimmer-dial-than-an-on-off-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/study-finds-cell-memory-can-be-more-like-a-dimmer-dial-than-an-on-off-switch","title":{"rendered":"Study finds cell memory can be more like a dimmer dial than an on\/off switch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/study-finds-cell-memory-can-be-more-like-a-dimmer-dial-than-an-on-off-switch2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When cells are healthy, we don\u2019t expect them to suddenly change cell types. A skin cell on your hand won\u2019t naturally morph into a brain cell, and vice versa. That\u2019s thanks to epigenetic memory, which enables the expression of various genes to \u201clock in\u201d throughout a cell\u2019s lifetime. Failure of this memory can lead to diseases, such as cancer.<\/p>\n<p>Traditionally, scientists have thought that epigenetic memory locks genes either \u201con\u201d or \u201coff\u201d \u2014 either fully activated or fully repressed, like a permanent Lite-Brite pattern. But MIT engineers have found that the picture has many more shades.<\/p>\n<p>In a new study <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell-genomics\/fulltext\/S2666-979X(25)00241-1\" target=\"_blank\">appearing today<\/a> in <em>Cell Genomics<\/em>, the team reports that a cell\u2019s memory is set not by on\/off switching but through a more graded, dimmer-like dial of gene expression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When cells are healthy, we don\u2019t expect them to suddenly change cell types. A skin cell on your hand won\u2019t naturally morph into a brain cell, and vice versa. That\u2019s thanks to epigenetic memory, which enables the expression of various genes to \u201clock in\u201d throughout a cell\u2019s lifetime. Failure of this memory can lead to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}