Going Direct: Reprogramming without iPSCs in Cell TherapiesDecember 21, 2015The generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) represents one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of our times, bringing us to the brink of patient-specific stem cell-based therapies. The “simple” generation process involves the forced expression of transcription factor genes in differentiated cells taken from the patient (normally skin cells) to “kick-start” the pluripotency-associated […]
Stress Accelerates Epigenetic AgeingDecember 18, 2015The epigenetic clock has developed faster than the iWatch: it can predict biological age from select CpGs, which when compared with chronological age, gives a metric known as Δ-age. The greater the difference, the greater the acceleration of epigenetic age, which indicates variation in the rate of senescence between people. To understand this variation and […]
A TAD Closer to Understanding 3D Chromatin StructureDecember 15, 2015Interview with Dr. Jennifer Phillips-Cremins at Keystone Symposia’s Precision Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology. My lab is really focused on understanding the epigenetic mechanisms that regulate early brain development. And the, sort of traditional way of studying epigenetic marks, is to zoom in and really focus on a particular modification at a precise location in […]
Directed Evolution in Synthetic Biology with Dr. Andrew EllingtonDecember 12, 2015Interview with Dr. Andrew Ellington at Keystone Symposia’s Precision Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology: Designing Genomes and Pathways Parts, Circuits, and Systems So in directed evolution, what you’re generally trying to do is to optimize function. And that can mean a lot of different things. But if we keep within the synthetic biology paradigm, we […]
Automating Pluripotent Stem Cell Culture – The Rise of the Robots?December 4, 2015They help cook dinner, clean the dishes, and sweep up afterward. They also build our cars, help us explore space, and now they may be on the verge of aiding in highly complex tasks in the laboratory. In particular, robot-based automation is being explored as a means to enhance efficiency in laboratories studying pluripotent stem […]
