Epimutation

/[ɛpɪmjuˈteɪʃən]/ noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A heritable change in gene expression that does not affect the actual base pair sequence of DNA.

    "The first sign of cellular abnormality in some tumors is an epimutation—a change in heritable chromatin marks, such as an increase or decrease in the density of DNA methylation."

Example

More examples

"The first sign of cellular abnormality in some tumors is an epimutation—a change in heritable chromatin marks, such as an increase or decrease in the density of DNA methylation."

Etymology

From epi- + mutation; compare epigenetic.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.