Unravelling 2022: the 15th volume of Epigenomics

Welcome to the 15th volume of Epigenomics! In this Foreword, I would like to welcome new and existing readers and take some time to highlight the year of 2022 for the journal. The Epigenomics team would like to express our gratitude to all our writers, peer reviewers and readers, as well as our helpful Editorial Board members, of their support for the journal.

This year Epigenomics saw a change in editors, with I myself taking over as Journal Development Editor for the journal from Storm Johnson. I am looking forward to working with our passionate and dedicated authors on their contributions and developments for the journal.

Epigenomics publishes a variety of articles covering the noteworthy advances seen in this everchanging field and the subsequent section will examine some of the most-read content of volume 14.

Year 2022 content highlights

Among the various article types published within Epigenomics, our most popular article was a perspective piece written by Milad Shirvaliloo titled ‘The unfavorable clinical outcome of COVID-19 in smokers is mediated by H3K4me3, H3K9me3 and H3K27me3 histone marks’ [1]. Their manuscript describes how the deleterious effects of smoking are mediated through epigenetic mechanisms, predominantly histone modifications. The article discusses the emerging research that suggests that smoking increases the expression of a mediator gene known as mdig, which modifies the transcription of several critical proteins implicated in the development of COVID-19. This perspective proved popular due to the author’s proposed theories surrounding smoking regulating several transcription activating markers, as well as the manuscript encompassing the now ever-popular topic of COVID-19.

Interviews continue to be popular with our audience, with the following two interviews from two members of the Epigenomics editorial board: ‘The epigenetics of early life adversity and trauma inheritance: an interview with Moshe Szyf’ [2] and ‘The era of biomarkers and precision medicine in colorectal cancer: an interview with Ajay Goel’ [3] scoring at second and third place in our most downloaded articles. In both interviews, Moshe Szyf and Ajay Goel described their work and experiences in the fields of social epigenetics and epigenetic biomarkers in colorectal cancer, respectively. Additionally, they both offered their expert opinions on recent epigenetic developments seen in 2022, combined with their opinions on where the field was heading and advice for early career scientists in the field.

From our numerous research papers published this year within Epigenomics, the research article written by Yiling Meng and their colleagues ‘A comprehensive bioinformatic analysis of RanBP9 expression and its relation to prognosis in human breast cancer’ stood out the most [4]. Their research focuses on the popular topic of cancer epigenetics and the investigation of the role of the scaffolding protein RanBP9 in breast cancers. Meng and their team discovered that the level of RanBP9 transcripts in most tumor samples was higher than in corresponding nontumor samples.

RanBP9 is highly expressed in breast cancer tissues, and the high-level expression was not found to be affected by factors such as gender, age and menopause. The paper concludes that increased expression of RanBP9 may correlate with poor prognosis and immune infiltration of breast cancer, setting the basis for future studies on the potential role of RanBP9 in breast cancer.

Our most popular Review article this year was written by Aoshuang Zhou and colleagues, titled ‘Epigenetic aging as a biomarker of dementia and related outcomes: a systematic review’ [5]. The Systematic Review produced evidence to determine whether there is a correlation between epigenetic aging and cognitive function, mild cognitive impairment and dementia. The article details a novel method of measuring a person’s biological age from a blood sample (described as ‘epigenetic aging’). This measure is thought to better estimate an individual’s rate of aging than their chronological age. Their Systematic Review concluded that insufficient evidence remains to indicate that current epigenetic aging clocks can be clinically useful biomarkers of dementia or cognitive aging.

Impact & reach of Epigenomics

Readership locations

Epigenomics has a wide global reach and has continued to witness a rise in yearly readership. The continental ratio for readership is displayed below (Figure 1), with the largest volume of readers hailing from Asia, Europe and then North America.

Authorship locations

The authorship demographics generally reflect that of our readership – with the majority of authors submitting from North America, Europe and Asia. The global split remained similar to previous years; however, authorship in Europe rose up by 7.16% in 2022 (Figure 2 & Table 1).

Conclusion

We express our gratitude to the essential contributors of Epigenomics, including the authors, reviewers and readers, whose valuable efforts have greatly contributed to the development and widespread availability of ground-breaking content. Our sincere appreciation also goes out to the members of the Editorial Board for their unwavering support, guidance and active participation. Epigenomics remains open to readers and content from all corners of the globe and encourages unsolicited submissions such as original research, reviews, editorials and other forms of content. For more details regarding article types and submission guidelines, please visit our website [6].

Epigenomics has a Twitter account with over 2200 followers, which is an excellent hub to engage with our content and the wider epigenomic research community. It has been a pleasure to connect with our authors and readers and I encourage anyone on Twitter to follow us @EpigenomicsFSG [7] and join the Epigenomics LinkedIn group for more updates [8].

Future Science Group is committed to making relevant scientific literature accessible for lay audiences. Our Plain Language Summary of Publications are visually enriched articles that provide a summary of a key publication or collection of related clinical studies, and we are delighted to offer this as a publication option in Epigenomics. To find out more about our Plain Language Summary of Publications and how to submit them to the journal, please visit our website [9].