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 […]
New Dimensions for Pluripotent Cell DifferentiationNovember 23, 2014The recent Hollywood trend of adapting much beloved movies from two-dimensional (2D) into 3-dimensional (3D) offerings hasn’t met with the expected fanfare and applause. However, strategies which have adapted pluripotent stem cell (PSC) differentiation strategies from 2D to 3D have created some masterpieces of epic proportions. Differentiating PSCs as adherent cell monolayers is a commonly […]
On the Trail of Naïve Human Pluripotent CellsNovember 23, 2014The creation of pluripotent stem-cell lines from early embryos has enabled the indefinite capture in vitro of one of nature’s most fascinating but fleeting faces. Yet, not all embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are alike. Mouse ESCs are free from differentiation bias and epigenetic restriction, whereas human ESCs have already made some fundamental developmental decisions. But […]
Two New Players for Better Differential Peak Detection in ChIP-SeqNovember 22, 2014Sometimes bioinformatics can seem a bit mystical, particularly when a tool arrives that makes you wonder what you were wasting your time doing before it. ChIP-seq is no stranger to this world and as a driver of a large proportion of epigenomic experimentation we’re also no stranger to the challenges of processing ChIP-seq data and peak calling. One of […]
Direct Reprogramming of Neural Stem Cells – A Step Closer to the Clinic?November 18, 2014“Well there goes another couple of thousand brain cells…” – a common thought after a beer, a glass of wine, or an hour or so of television, or maybe more if it’s reality TV. But can we replace these lost cells? Millions of college kids would like to, but there’s also a long list of […]