Interestingly, both vitamins affect the same family of TET enzymes, which actively remove DNA methylation; Vitamin A increases the number of these TET enzymes within the cell, and Vitamin C enhances their activity. When used in combination, they remove epigenetic memory in the form of DNA methylation synergistically, and dramatically improve the rate at which stem cells with naive developmental characteristics can be created. For the full story see the press releases from the Babraham Institute and the University of Otago.
Reference
Retinol and ascorbate drive erasure of epigenetic memory and enhance reprogramming to naïve pluripotency by complementary mechanisms. Timothy Alexander Hore, Ferdinand von Meyenn, Mirunalini Ravichandran, Martin Bachman, Gabriella Ficz, David Oxley, Fátima Santos, Shankar Balasubramanian, Tomasz P. Jurkowski and Wolf Reik. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1608679113. PNAS October 25, 2016 vol. 113 no. 43 12202-12207.