Importantly, many of the genes displaying alcohol-associated methylation changes also demonstrated changes in expression at the mRNA level. Although the mechanism between alcohol-induced epigenetic modification and altered transcription has yet to be elucidated, these events occurred in genes with a functional spectrum related to epigenetics and development, including his-tone modifications, chromatin remodeling and developmental processing neural genes. Collectively, the results indicate that alcohol exposure has the potential to epigenetically modify genes critical in mediating dysmorphology in neurodevelopment, findings that may have major implications in identifying new mechanisms of how alcohol leads to developmental deficits at the epigenetic level.
