Making Sense of the Grade: ChIP Validation TerminologyJanuary 17, 2013Antibody vendors have been hard at work to offer antibodies that are suitable for applications like ChIP. Usually these antibodies have been used successfully in peer-reviewed publications. In many cases they’ve been validated internally by an R&D team, and in some cases, each lot may be validated to work in ChIP applications. The tricky part […]
MeCP2 Puts 5hmC in a Bind in Active Neuronal GenesJanuary 7, 2013A good actor can play very different roles and still make you believe in the character. For example, who knew Wolverine could emote and sing, like Hugh Jackman does in Les Misérables? Just the same, it turns out that MeCP2, a protein thought to repress transcription by binding to 5mC (5-methylcytosine, actually seems to encourage […]
DANPOS Reveals Dynamic NucleosomesJanuary 2, 2013Keeping track of where some nucleosomes are on chromatin can be just as tricky as keeping track of Taylor Swift’s love life. They’re on, they’re off, they’re at a new place. Well, here comes a new bioinformatics solution to help you keep score on the nucleosome front, anyway. It’s called DANPOS, and it provides single-nucleotide […]
Watch Chromatin “Breathe” in Embryonic Stem CellsDecember 31, 2012This holiday season, we breathed in lots of good smells—the scent of pine trees, the aroma of pumpkin pie, and the unmistakable smoky smell of a roaring fire. Now, researchers say they’ve caught chromatin in the act of “breathing” in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) before they differentiate. The team from California and Italy developed […]
Top Epigenetics & ncRNA Conference Picks for Winter 2013December 27, 2012We’re on the verge of 2013. For those of you who want to up your epigenetics research game and have some fun in the process, we’ve got conferences you should definitely check out. The year starts off a little quiet on the numbers front, but the quality more than makes up for it. January […]