The central role of gene control processes in normal cellular function which has been discussed throughout this book makes it inevitable that abnormalities in such processes will result in disease. In addition to the abnormalities that occur in cancer (see Chapter 13), it has been demonstrated that many human genetic diseases involve the inheritance of mutated genes encoding proteins that regulate gene expression. A number of different diseases have been shown to involve mutations in proteins involved in each of the three fundamental processes that regulate gene expression (see Chapters 4\u20139), namely the processes of transcription itself, the regulation of chromatin structure which is necessary for transcription to occur, and post-transcriptional processes. These cases will be discussed in Sections 14.1\u201314.3 of this chapter, respectively. Section 14.4 will describe the manner in which abnormalities in regulatory RNAs are involved in human genetic diseases and Section 14.5 will describe alterations in gene regulatory processes that can occur in human infectious disease. Finally, it is clear that the insights obtained by studies on gene regulation in cancer and other human diseases may lead to the development of effective therapies for manipulating gene expression in these diseases and this is discussed in Section 14.6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n