In a companion study also published in Science, Nick Haining, MD, and colleagues from Dana - Farber Cancer Institute, also found a distinct
epigenetic landscape for exhausted T cells in mice and humans, and they were able to ascribe key functions in T cell exhaustion to some of these epigenetic changes.
Conrad Hal Waddington coined a classical metaphor
for the process of cell differentiation during development: An
epigenetic landscape characterized by valleys of different levels, and hills to separate them.