Renato Paro received his Ph.D. at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. After postdoctoral stays at the University of Edinburgh and Stanford University, he continued his career at the Center for Molecular Biology of the University of Heidelberg (ZMBH) in Germany. In 2000 became Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Biosciences of the University of Heidelberg and acting director of the ZMBH. In 2006 he was appointed founding chair of the new Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) of the ETH Zurich in Basel and Professor of Biosystems at the University of Basel. The major research areas of his laboratory focused on mechanisms of epigenetic gene control and cellular signaling. He is now Emeritus Professor.

Raffaella Santoro is Professor of Epigenetics and Chromatin Dynamics at the University of Zurich. She studied Chemistry at the University of Rome La Sapienza where she also obtained her PhD in Biochemistry. After a post-doctoral stay at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, in 2007 she became group leader at ETH and thereafter at the University of Zurich. Since 2015, she is a member of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). In 2018 was awarded of an European Research Council Advanced Grant. Her main area of research lies in the analysis of epigenetic and chromatin regulation and the dynamics of genome organization and how their alterations contribute to complex diseases such as cancer.

Anton Wutz is Professor of Genetics at the Institute of Molecular Health Sciences at the ETH Zurich. He studies nuclear mechanisms that regulate changes of cellular identity during stem cell differentiation. His laboratory has contributed to the development of new genetic strategies for studying mammalian pathways of gene regulation and concepts of how these act to specify the diverse cell types of the body.

Chapters are structured from phenomena to molecular mechanisms

The textbook offers cross kingdom comparisons

Links basic epigenetics to translational science

Method boxes offer a practical approach

Biology of Chromatin.- Chromatin Dynamics.- Cellular Memory.- Dosage Compensation Systems.- Genomic Imprinting.- RNA-based Mechanisms of Gene Silencing.- Regeneration and Reprogramming.- Epigenetics and Cancer.- Epigenetics and Metabolism.