Over 15 inherited diseases are caused by expansion of triplet-repeats. Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) patients are homozygous for an expanded GAA triplet-repeat sequence in intron 1 of the FXN gene. The expanded GAA triplet-repeat results in deficiency of FXN gene transcription, which is reversed via administration of histone deacetylase inhibitors indicating that transcriptional silencing is at least partially due to an epigenetic abnormality.