MicroRNA Isoforms Distinguish Between Breast Cancer SubtypesOctober 6, 2015Much like the early explorers who set out to find a new trade route to Asia and accidentally stumbled across the Americas, researchers mapping the transcriptome have come across some big surprises. Recently, Isidore Rigoutsos’s lab showed that the expression of microRNA isoforms (called ‘isomiRs’) and tRNAs depends on sex, population, and race. Now, this […]
Stressed Nucleosomes Linked to DepressionOctober 6, 2015Have you ever felt stressed and even depressed? Well, a new study linking stress-induced depressive behaviors to changes in nucleosome positioning suggests that in order to relax yourself, you may first need to relax your chromatin. Susceptibility to major depressive disorder (MDD) depends on genetic variability but also on environmental factors such as a stressful […]
New Reporter System Captures DNA Methylation in Real TimeOctober 1, 2015If a picture is worth a thousand words then surely a video must be worth more? So far, our knowledge about DNA methylation has been limited to a comic strip of static images at different stages. That may all be about to change with a new tool reported by the lab of Rudolf Jaenisch, which […]
Microfluidic ChIP Makes a Few Cells Go a Long WaySeptember 11, 2015Chromatin immunoprecipitation (or ChIP) is a handy technique to study epigenetic profiles, but only if you have enough cells. The main problem with ChIP is that it can be a “greedy” technique that uses large numbers of cells while giving back the bare minimum of DNA as a result. This is problematic for the study of genome-wide […]
A Polymerase Evolved for Your Bisulfite Converted DNASeptember 11, 2015Bisulfite conversion can be used in so many different applications that it’s not so surprisingly referred to as the gold standard for DNA methylation analysis. But getting to the gold can create some problems for DNA. The process of converting methylated DNA (5mC) to Uracil and then finally a Thymine is harsh as it involves […]
