5fC & 5caC Follow Up Strong in 5hmC SequelDecember 14, 2011Life was simpler back when there were only four bases. Nowadays researchers studying DNA methylation have to keep track of four methylCytosine derivatives alone, and the research is just starting to heat up. The last couple of years the TET family of proteins has proven effective at catalyzing 5-methylcytosine (5mC) into 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), apparently as […]
Databases for EpigeneticistsDecember 13, 2011The holidays have come a little early for epigeneticists! Nucleic Acids Research just published papers on several databases that put a wealth of information on various epi-phenomena right at your fingertips. Chances are, at least one of these has info that will make your research life a whole lot easier. HIstome The Histone Infobase (HIstome), […]
Profiling Exon Methylation with Liquid Hybridization Capture-Based Bisulfite SequencingDecember 12, 2011Sometimes, you just want to get to the good stuff right away. Now, researchers in China report that they’ve developed a way to target their sequencing when analyzing methylomes rather juggling 6 hard drives. With their new liquid hybridization capture-based bisulfite sequencing (LHC-BS) method, they just grab exons and analyze them for methylation. The method […]
EpiGenie Review: Non-coding RNAs and miRNAs in CancerDecember 9, 2011Based on the latest research, the cancer::non-coding RNA conncection is undeniable. It’s just all the specifics around things like miRNA regulation that are still left to be understood. While dedicated epigenetics investigators are hard at work solving those mechanistic riddles, we’ve decided to take a look back at what’s been learned so far. Here are […]
Hypermethylated Pockets within Hypomethylated Genomic Regions Defines Cancer CellsDecember 5, 2011What makes a cell become a cancerous? We’d all love to know that, right? Well, new research has gotten a little bit closer to figuring out key epigenetic differences between cancer and normal genomes. It turns out that the DNA methylation patterns of these cells differ drastically, no surprise there, but it’s the genomic context […]