Aharon Razin

Aharon Razin, together with Howard Cedar, established the fundamental principles of DNA methylation inheritance that underpin cancer epigenetics, demonstrating that methylation patterns are semi-conservatively replicated during cell division through the action of DNMT1 maintenance methyltransferase recognizing hemimethylated CpG sites on newly replicated DNA. His biochemical characterization of DNA methyltransferase enzymes revealed the enzymatic basis for epigenetic memory transmission. He showed that de novo methylation by DNMT3A/3B establishes new methylation patterns while DNMT1 maintains them, a paradigm explaining how aberrant methylation patterns once established in cancer cells are propagated through clonal expansion. His work provided the mechanistic foundation for DNA methylation-based cancer diagnostics.