“Our study contradicts what is written in the textbooks,” said senior study author Terry Magnuson, Ph.D., Sarah Graham Kenan Professor and chair of genetics, director of the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Everybody thought that Xist triggers X-inactivation, but now we have to rethink how this important process starts.”

“If we can figure out the mechanism that triggers X-inactivation, we can potentially apply this knowledge to diseases that have an epigenetic component,” Kalantry said. “So it can have implications not only in fundamentally understanding X-inactivation but also to gain insight into the increasing array of illnesses where the epigenetic machinery has gone awry – such as in prostate and breast cancers.”