Healthy aging: the heart of the matter is outside of the heart

Epigenetic events are crucial in the regulation of the complex process of cardiac development,enabling the temporal and spatial orchestration of all steps necessary for specification,differentiation and maturation of the various cell types of the heart. DNA methylation, histonemodifications and non-coding RNAs all work in concert to shape chromatin structure andmodify gene accessibility and transcription as needed. In this chapter we give insights intohow precisely these mechanisms regulate cardiac development and highlight specificexamples retrieved from mammalian and non-mammalian model organisms. We also detailhow the very same principles are exploited in a reverse process to reprogram differentiatedand mature human cells backwards to a pluripotent state as is been done in the creation ofhuman induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) for basic and translational applications.