Genomes of replicatively senescent cells undergo global epigenetic changes leading to gene silencing and activation of transposable elements.

Replicative cellular senescence is an important tumor suppression mechanism and also contributes to aging. Progression of both cancer and aging include significant epigenetic components, but the chromatin changes that take place during cellular senescence are not known. We used formaldehyde assisted isolation of regulatory elements (FAIRE) to map genome-wide chromatin conformations.