In vitro alcohol treatment offers a model to assess alcohol effects on methylation patterns within distinct cell populations. Administration of ethanol to neural stem cells increased the length of the cell cycle, specifically the time spent in the G1 and S phases (Hicks et al., 2010). Interestingly, this increase correlated with hypermethylation of multiple cell cycle-related genes, including cyclin family genes related to G1 and G2 progression. In another study, expression of MeCP2 and global methylation markers was altered by both binge-like and continuous ethanol exposure in neural stem cell culture (Liyanage et al., 2015). These cells displayed altered mature morphology compared to controls, suggesting that the observed global methylation patterns in ethanol-treated cells could affect differentiation and maturation processes. This hypothesis is supported by another study demonstrating that alcohol alters differentiation of neural stem cells by limiting the type of cells produced by the stem cell population (Zhou et al., 2011). Reduced differentiation potential occurred alongside changes to methylation patterns during stem cell progression through the cell cycle. Mukhopadhyay et al. (2013) reported decreased global methylation in cultured mouse
