NIH Digs into the Diet Movement with New Epigenetics Research GrantsJuly 16, 2009Nowadays it seems like everybody’s on some kind of a diet. Until recently, even public funding for epigenetic research had been leaner than a movie star on the South Beach diet. But with last year’s funding of the Roadmap Initiative and yesterday’s release of grant applications for the study of diet and epigenetics, things are […]
This Hi-Def Methylation Experience is Brought to You by Bisulfite CaptureJuly 15, 2009Even if you don’t have a new flat screen HD TV hanging in your living room, most of us have at least seen the beauty that is HD when strolling through the TV section in the local Wal-Mart or Best Buy. The picture is so crystal-clear that watching a game in HD is just like […]
DNA Methylation and HIV LatencyJuly 1, 2009You’d think keeping HIV from replicating was a good thing, and it is … unless you’re trying to eradicate the virus. One of the world’s most elusive viruses is an expert at maintaining a low profile, laying dormant in CD4+ cells even during highly active anti-retroviral treatment (HAART). A team of American and Swedish researchers […]
Imprints Can Be a Real TurnoffJune 24, 2009For at least 100 genes, only one of its alleles can be expressed right from the get-go while the other allele is shut down. This imprinted pattern remains throughout development. While cis-acting epigenetic elements have been implicated in the process, the research community doesn’t have enough evidence to conclusively pin the blame on any one. […]
Move Over MeDIP: Methyl Binding Proteins Enrich Methylation StudiesJune 18, 2009Since their debut with tiling microarrays back in 2005, DNA methylation affinity reagents have rapidly become a weapon of choice for prepping samples for genome-wide methylation studies. In the last few years enrichment methods have evolved almost as rapidly as the technology platforms on which they’re analyzed. Let’s take a look at some of the […]