miRNAs Host New Variety ShowOctober 5, 2010If variety is the spice of life, then miRNAs are a bowl of 3-alarm Texas chili. A new study in the journal RNA used NextGen sequencing techniques to reveal that miRNAs show quite a bit of sequence variety, even within individual miRNA species. The research, conducted by Lik Wee Lee and colleagues at the Institute […]
Who Says Dnmt1 is Only a Maintenance Methyltransferase?October 5, 2010While investigating the in vitro activity of DNA methyltransferases on annealed oligonucleotide substrates, Australian researchers recently found that murine DNA methyltransferase I will quite happily methylate non-CpG sites in DNA bubbles. Jason Ross and Peter Molloy from the CSIRO, in collaboration with Japanese researchers from the Institute for Protein Research in Osaka, observed a high […]
Do Transcription Factors Occupy All their Binding Motifs in the Genome? Not quite.October 4, 2010A British team of researchers recently decided to take closer look at the role of DNA methylation in conserved consensus motifs. Â Dr. Roger Foo from the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge was nice enough to share a bit about their approach that recently published in BMC Genomics (Sept 2010) last week. Transcription factors recognise […]
O-allylhydroxylamine Threatens Bisulfite’s Gold Standard StatusSeptember 23, 2010Let’s get ready to rumble! A new reagent, O-allylhydroxylamine, has entered the ring to challenge bisulfite conversion as the undisputed champion of DNA methylation analysis. In the latest issue of Nucleic Acids Research, chemists from Ludwig-Maximillians University in Germany introduced a new chemical reagent that could be a game-changer for distinguishing between cytosine (C) and […]
Heterogeneous DNA Methylation and Biomarkers: It’s ComplicatedSeptember 23, 2010The state of the economy, global climate change, DNA methylation…These are all complicated issues. Well, we found one well-written review article by Thomas Mikeska, Ida Candiloro, and Alexander Dobrovic at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the University of Melbourne in Australia that tries to put one of those topics, DNA methylation in perspective, at […]
