A Good Friend is Forever: DNMTs and Histone ComplexesJanuary 26, 2015It’s not always easy to find good friends, but recent work has found that the de novo DNA methyltransferases DNMT3A2 and DNMT3B1 are far from socially awkward. Baubec et al. from the Swiss team lead by Dirk Schübeler uncovered some companions of these DNMTs by profiling their binding in embryonic stem cells (ESCs) through streptavidin […]
Abcam’s Bisulfite-Seq High Sensitivity Kit Streamlines 5mC DetectionJanuary 26, 2015The new Bisulfite-Seq High Sensitivity Kit from the creative crew at Abcam, is a 2-in-1 package that weaves bisulfite conversion, and Illumina® sequencing library prep into the same process. This single kit can take you from sample DNA, to firing up a Bisulfite Sequencing (BS) run that same day. There’s No Such Thing as Too […]
Active Demethylation: TET Enzymes, 5hmC, and CompanyJanuary 20, 20155hmC was originally discovered way back in the 50’s in bacteriophages and was first observed in mammals in the 70’s, but research into this was set back when these studies failed to replicate. And going back to the future, in 2009 two independent research groups, publishing on the same pages in science, found that this “unknown […]
Why Drugs in Dad Can Affect Your EpigenomeJanuary 15, 2015Some people aren’t always happy about what gets passed on from their parents. It’s great to have your Dad’s strong cheekbones but not so great to have his lactose intolerance. It turns out we may acquire even more from our fathers than we ever thought during our germ cell years. A new study from Elizabeth Thomas’s lab […]
Passive Demethylation Drives DevelopmentJanuary 15, 2015Ever taken one of those online personality tests, such as those that tell you if you’ve got a passive or active personality? Well researchers at Stanford set out to perform such a test, not on themselves, but to uncover the ‘personality’ of demethylation during development. DNA can be demethylated actively through the TET enzyme family, or passively during DNA […]
