In the Epitranscriptome Clusters of Co-Methylation Define m6A’s FunctionNovember 13, 2014Lately, at the EpiGenie HQ, we’ve had our mind on methylation and our money on RNA. Not just limited to DNA or Cytosine, we’ve seen that N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is a highly dynamic mark in RNA that has a critical role in stem cell differentiation. Now researchers from the Northwestern Polytechnical University in China have set out to find how m6A dynamics work on […]
A Little Negativity Can Go a Long Way with Protein-Based Genome EditingNovember 12, 2014In today’s culture negativity is usually frowned upon; maintaining a positive outlook is almost essential to a successful scientific career, but an innovative team of researchers have put some negativity to good use in improving transfection of genome editing complexes using negatively charged proteins and nucleic acid transfection reagents. Conventional protein-based therapeutics usually focus on […]
Breaking Barriers: Cloning Made Easier by Erasing Epigenetic MarksNovember 5, 2014If Star Wars is anything to go by, cloning techniques of the future will be able to create a whole army of clones in the blink of an eye. Yet, back on planet Earth, the cloning of today is still relatively inefficient. A new study published in Cell identifies an important epigenetic road block in […]
Polymerases are Key Influencers in Homologous Recombination EventsNovember 5, 2014Gene targeting by homologous recombination can be variable and researchers are itching to understand what key factors underlie variable success in editing experiments. Could it be an unfavorable chromatin environment, repetitive sequences, or maybe just bad luck? An unrelenting group of researchers at the University of Washington recently set out to shed some light on the genomic elements […]
in vivo CRISPR Takes Aim at Key DNA Methylation Players in the BrainOctober 31, 2014Adding to the ever growing potential of genome editing, one of the latest breakthroughs from the lab of Feng Zhang at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard puts CRISPR/Cas9 to the test with an interesting research trifecta of: in vivo genome editing focused on the brain genome editing that targeted DNA methylation machinery including key readers and writers. both […]
