Another study (Zhou et al. 2011) aimed to model the epigenetic effects of FAS in NSC. Previous work demonstrated alterations in DNA methylation of genes involved in cell growth, cell cycle and cancer within mouse embryo cultures (Liu et al. 2009). Past work had also demonstrated altered neural tube development, which may be due to the fact that ethanol can interrupt the methylation process by inhibiting methionine synthase, which would redirect the utilization of folate, and decrease DNA methyl transferase mRNA levels. (Liu et al. 2009) Zhou and colleagues established the epigenetic effects of ethanol during the neurogenesis of dorsal root ganglion (DRG) NSC, whose epigenetic changes have been previously characterized during differentiation (Singh et al. 2009a; Singh et al. 2009b), hypothesizing that ethanol alters the DNA methylation profile of NSCs during development.
