DNMT1 Depletion Helps Hunt for Heritable MethylationFebruary 5, 2015Sometimes it takes a special kind of guy to get the job done and when the job is to keep imprinted genes differentially methylated, that guy is DNMT1. An international group of researchers led by Jacquetta Trasler in Canada set out to exploit this fact in order to identify yet unknown imprinted genomic sequences. Several […]
Keeping Tabs on Off-Target Effects of Genome EditingFebruary 5, 2015While the fashion and music tastes of the late 1980’s was rather questionable, it was a time of historic technological and societal change. Between the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the rise of the global computer network that we now call internet, a small group of researchers succeeded for the first time in generating […]
From Neuron to Germline: Inheritance by Mobile RNAsFebruary 4, 2015We’ve got transgenerational epigenetic inheritance on the mind and now strangely enough it seems that the mind also causes transgenerational epigenetic inheritance?! Researchers have just shown the strangest case of inheritance yet: soma to germline. A talented team from the University of Maryland have been tracing double stranded RNA (dsRNA) in C. elegans and have made some interesting observations […]
Neurodevelopment and Methylomic Trajectories: Sex and DiseaseFebruary 4, 2015If variety is the spice to life than the brain must be the spiciest organ of them all, with DNA methylation as its rooster sauce (which comes with its own embedded sodium bisuflite conversion kit). By studying the delicious layers of DNA methylation variation we’ve seen strange parental expression biases, methylation differences between discordant twins, and how the dynamics […]
Cellular Transdifferentiation: Meet the 21st Century AlchemistsFebruary 3, 2015For centuries, some of the world’s leading scholars worked endlessly with one objective, to turn ordinary metals into gold. Now, scientists of the 21st century are trying their hand at another type of alchemy, turning one cell type into another. This process, known as ‘transdifferentiation’ or ‘direct reprogramming’ can create a potentially limitless source of […]