A report on the Keystone Symposium 'Epigenetics: Regulation of Chromatin Structure in Development and Disease', Breckenridge, USA, 11-16 April 2007.

Epigenetics, which is the study of the information carried by the genome that is not coded by DNA, is a rapidly expanding field of study. A recent Keystone symposium on the regulation of chromatin structure in development covered chromatin structure, epigenetic memory mediated by the binding of Polycomb group proteins and the hot topic of the role of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) in heterochromatin formation, DNA methylation targeting and gene silencing. Here we focus on presentations that discussed the role of ncRNAs in epigenetic regulation and the importance of intragenic methylation in regulating transcription.