Editorial Volume 5, Issue 10 pp 719—720

Figure 1. Epigenetic drift occurs throughout life, including pediatric populations and pre-puberty, targeting genes which occupy peripheral positions in the human interactome. Interactions have been suppressed and connectivity is approximated by the radial distance from the center. Genes undergoing age-related changes in expression, genes undergoing somatic mutations in cancer (COSMIC), longevity associated genes and housekeeping genes all exhibit widely different connectivity distributions, compared to genes undergoing epigenetic drift, as indicated on the right. Epigenetic drift targets many transcription factors bivalently marked in human embryonic stem cells, which co-locate at peripheral network positions. Thus, epigenetic drift may underlie the observed decline of stem cell function with age, immunosenescence, and may result in increased disease predisposition(e.g. cancer).