BPA Seeps Into Placental miRNA ExpressionMay 4, 2010Since 2008, Bisphenol A (BPA) has seen more bad press than a big U.S. bank. The media blitz of studies linking BPA to a number of reproductive, immune and CNS disorders has led people to eye suspiciously everything from baby bottles to that cool REI water bottle you’ve been hiking with the last few years. […]
Tracing the Roots of Mesenchymal Stem Cells Yields DNA Methylation InsightsApril 28, 2010Most of us are at least somewhat curious about our lineage: are we descended from a king, an outlaw, or maybe just a particularly snazzy dresser? And do our distant cousins in faraway lands share certain characteristics (such as a penchant for polyester) with us? A group of researchers in Norway asked similar questions about […]
CpG Islands Tackle Chromatin Remodeling ProjectApril 28, 2010Researchers have known about CpG Islands (CGIs) for decades, but there are still more questions than answers when it comes to this heavily studied genomic real-estate. Hypermethylated CGIs seem to get a lot of attention for their apparent involvement in transcriptional silencing, but most CGIs stay unmethylated. So what’s going on in these unmethylated CGIs? […]
ChIP-Sequencing Tips for Small SamplesApril 28, 2010ChIP sequencing (ChIP-Seq) has revolutionized the way researchers can study protein-DNA interactions, enabling genome wide protein binding profiling in one experiment, rather than looking one locus at a time. Not satisfied with pushing just one envelope, today’s researchers are now moving towards samples that are very limited. Fortunately, ChIP methods have aged finer than a […]
RDM1 Corners the RNA Directed DNA Methylation PuzzleApril 28, 2010It’s often easiest to put together a jigsaw puzzle by finding the corner pieces first, then working on the borders before moving on to what’s happening in the center. A similar approach to solving the transcriptional gene silencing (TGS) and RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) mechanisms in Arabidopsis has identified a protein, RDM1, which seems to […]
