Developmental Windows: Dutch Hunger WinterDecember 2, 2014Famine is never a good thing, particularly if you’re a developing fetus. And while the role of maternal diet in fetal programming is nothing new to the world of DNA methylation, there’s still a lot to be learned about the subtle variations. When it comes to growth and metabolism, timing of the environmental exposure appears is important, […]
DNMTs Divide Their Dynamic DNA Methylation LabourNovember 27, 2014Splitting up work amongst the team is always a sound strategy for success. We’ve seen that the TET family likes to divide it’s labour and now, not so suprisingly, the ever so famous DNA methyltransferases have also been caught working smart. Researchers from the Center for Individualized Medicine at the Mayo Clinic used acute and combined depletions […]
Embryonic Stem Cell Model Highlights Importance of Histone Mutation in Childhood TumorigenesisNovember 26, 2014Childhood cancers are truly devastating diseases; they cause major loss of young lives due to the distinct lack of treatment options stemming from the limited access to tumor tissues. Hopefully, a promising new study published in Science will change this. Researchers from the laboratory Viviane Tabar at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA […]
Boosting Bone by Exercising your Stem CellsNovember 25, 2014How do you do it? Running? Boxing? Jane Fonda work out videos? Whatever the method, we all need exercise to keep our bodies and minds healthy and functional, and it now turns out that stem cells benefit from exercise too! Researchers have demonstrated that remote mechanical stimulation of transplanted mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is a potentially […]
CRISPR Heavyweight Cas9 K.O.’s 30 Million BasesNovember 25, 2014Cas9 has already been shown to be able to knock out up to kilobase-size fragments of DNA, making it a big hitter in the world of genome editing. But one of the biggest enemies for researchers using such tools is the diploid karyotype, which impairs the study of the effects of a mutation or of […]
