Argonaute AGO2 Gives miRNAs a Little Trim Around the EdgesApril 17, 2012Isn’t there always one person in a group of friends who’s a little weird or different? It turns out that AGO2, is a little different from its Argonaute paralogs, AGO1, 3, and 4. Researchers in Singapore are reporting that unlike other Argonautes, oddball AGO2 trims mammalian miRNAs, changing their functions during development. The team knew […]
miRNAs Decide Which Honey Bees Do Which Honey-Do’sApril 17, 2012It seems nobody has been busier than the honey bee lately when it comes to being a model epigenetic organism. (Watch your back c. elegans!) Over the last year or so, we’ve seen how HDAC inhibitors affect the bee caste system, as well as how social cues alter DNA methylation patterns in the brains of […]
Active Motif MeDIP-Seq Services Will Put You On the Right MethylPath™April 17, 2012Let’s say you want to get the ball rolling for studies on a new disease. You know you want to search for any important changes in methylation patterns; but with a whole genome worth of ground to cover, how do you decide where to look first? Active Motif now offers the MethylPath™ MeDIP-Seq Service that […]
Recorded NIH Webcast with Dr. Randy Jirtle: Epigenetics-How Genes and Environment InteractApril 17, 2012The interplay between epigenetics and the environment is one of many fascinating research areas of epigenetics. If you were lucky enough to attend Keystone Symposia’s Meeting on Environmental Epigenomics and Disease Susceptibility last spring, you were fortunate enough to hear from some of the world’s top researchers leading the way to a better understanding of […]
Colon Cancer Signs on the Dotted Line with Epigenomic Enhancer SignatureApril 16, 2012Handwriting experts say that someone’s signature reveals a lot about their personality. Whether these analyses are “scientific” is debatable, but researchers in Ohio and New Hampshire have evidence that they’ve identified a signature of enhancer histone modifications that points to colon cancer. Mono- and dimethylated H3K4 marks many classes of enhancers, so the team did […]