The study of stable and often heritable changes in gene expression patterns that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence is known as epigenetics . Two of the most well characterized epigenetic alterations are histone modification and DNA methylation . Beyond the genome, the complete set of epigenetic modifications to the cellular DNA or histones (epigenome) are known to play an important role in the etiology of diseases . The epigenome plays a pivotal role in the regulation of chromatin activity and therefore affect DNA repair and gene expression . Epigenomic alterations have been established in obesity, diabetes and cancer [154–156]. Adequate evidence exists, that epigenetic dysregulations have been implicated in the pathogenesis of oral and oropharyngeal cancers [157–161]; hence it is plausible that epigenomic analyses would provide better insight into oral carcinogenesis.