RNA Pol II: The Hardest Working Polymerase in EpigeneticsAugust 13, 2009Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: new research shows RNA Pol II is a key player in an epigenetic mechanism. Lately, RNA Pol II seems to be in the headlines more than the Jonas Brothers, only with fewer screaming, teen fans. Recently we featured a paper suggesting that non-coding tiRNAs are formed through […]
Vidaza® and Entinostat Combo; A Potential Lung Cancer TherapyAugust 6, 2009Some things always seem better in combos: beer & pizza, SpongeBob & square pants… Soon, we may need to add Vidaza® & entinostat to that list. At the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, researchers from Johns Hopkins Medical Institute and the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute reported that the combination of Vidaza® (5-azacitidine) […]
Mir-143 Slacks Off, Leaving DNMT3A To Run Wild In Colorectal CancerAugust 6, 2009We like to think of epigenetics in terms of distinct areas like chromatin, DNA methylation and non-coding RNA (heck, we’ve even divided up the EpiGenie website that way), but more and more evidence is blurring the lines and showing us how these overlap. A recent publication from researchers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong […]
True Biomarker: DNA Methylation Steps up in Non-Invasive Prenatal DxAugust 5, 2009With the raging success of Twilight and True Blood, the masses of entertainment junkies out there have joined a well-established movement in the scientific community to make the most out of blood. There are a ton of potentially useful biomarkers floating around in our veins and the non-invasive sampling process has made blood a crowd […]
Clamping Down on Affinity ReagentsAugust 4, 2009U of Chicago protein engineer Shohei Koide knows there’s biology beyond the genome. Adding a methyl group onto a histone here, or an acetyl group onto one there, can change the way genes are expressed. There’s gotta be a reliable way of finding those postranslational mods in the first place, though, right? That’s why he […]
