Epigenetic and Mitochondrial Clocks Synchronously Accelerate with Bipolar DisorderJanuary 18, 2018A wise man once said that time is relative, and while physics was on his mind, it seems that biology should have been as well. For instance, patients with bipolar disorder suffer from accelerated aging. However, examinations of telomere length have given mixed results, and this inspired the lab of Joao Quevedo in the University […]
H3K4 Mono-Methylation Means More at Most EnhancersJanuary 16, 2018People can have some pretty strange tastes. From mayonnaise on fries to syrup on spaghetti, there’s no accounting for personal preference. Proteins can have some interesting preferences too, where some regions of the genome look better than others. To get at these preferences, a recent publication from the Laboratory of Bing Ren at UC San […]
Single-Cell DNA Methylomes Reveal the Reprograming Secrets of Early Human EmbryosJanuary 16, 2018You’ve heard before that timing is everything, and this is doubly true in developmental biology. New research out of Fuchou Tang’s lab (Peking University, Beijing) singles in on the timing of methylation changes during embryonic development, and exposes the delicate epigenetic dance of global demethylation and targeted remethylation. Tang’s lab is no stranger to embryonic […]
YY1 Drives Enhancers and Promoters Loopy!January 15, 2018Cell culture hood in disarray? Favorite coffee cup missing? Internet running slow? What exactly drives you loopy in the laboratory?! Recently, the lab of Richard A. Young (Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, USA) has been driven round the bend in their quest to understand what controls the DNA looping process that brings together enhancers […]
TET Proteins: Defending Differentiation by denying de novo Methylation!December 13, 2017I don´t overeat! I’m not lazy! I’m not eating the agar plates when I´m working in the lab late, honest! Psychologists consider denial as one of our most primitive defense mechanisms and recent studies of epigenetic defense mechanisms in embryonic stem cells (ESCs) by the labs of Olivier Elemento (Weill Cornell Medical College) and Danwei […]
