Orofacial clefts occur with a frequency of 1 to 2 per 1000 live births. Cleft palate, which accounts for 30% of orofacial clefts, is caused by the failure of the secondary palatal processes--medially directed, oral projections of the paired embryonic maxillary processes--to fuse. Both gene mutations and environmental effects contribute to the complex etiology of this disorder. Although much progress has been made in identifying genes whose mutations are associated with cleft palate, little is known about the mechanisms by which the environment adversely influences gene expression during secondary palate development. An increasing body of evidence, however, implicates epigenetic processes as playing a role in adversely influencing orofacial development. Epigenetics refers to inherited changes in phenotype or gene expression caused by processes other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence. Such processes include, but are not limited to, DNA methylation, microRNA effects, and histone modifications that alter chromatin conformation. In this review, we describe our current understanding of the possible role epigenetics may play during development of the secondary palate. Specifically, we present the salient features of the embryonic palatal methylome and profile the expression of numerous microRNAs that regulate protein-encoding genes crucial to normal orofacial ontogeny.
Keywords: CpG islands; DMR; cleft palate; methylation promoter arrays; methylome; microRNAs; secondary palate.