SNPs Display their Methyl MagnetismAugust 25, 2011Some people believe that the right sports car, dog, or teeth whitener will turn them into an irresistible magnet for the opposite sex. While impressive epigenetics knowledge may not help you attract Mr./Ms. Right, two recent papers strengthen the case that single-nucleotide variants can act as powerful magnets for DNA methylation. In the first paper […]
Quick Interviews from Keystone Symposia’s Meeting on Environmental Epigenomics and Disease SusceptibilityAugust 25, 2011We set out to provide a few nice interviews with some of the outstanding cast of researchers that presented at Keystone Symposia’s meeting on Environmental Epigenomics and Disease Susceptibility last spring, but one thing led to another, and well…here they are now. Apologies for the delay, but we think you’ll agree it was worth the […]
A New Spin on RNA PurificationAugust 18, 2011RNA isolation. It doesn’t get that much hype, but it should considering it’s the first, and perhaps most critical, step in virtually every RNA analysis workflow out there. Today’s favorite techniques are increasingly accurate and precise and some applications, like next-gen sequencing, will have you swimming in data analysis for weeks. That’s not such a […]
RNA On-Demand: Direct–zol™ From Zymo ResearchAugust 17, 2011The boom in RNA research has made the need for quality RNA samples climb faster than the price of gasoline. Unfortunately, RNA isolation techniques haven’t matched that trend, forcing researchers to spend hours on laborious methods to get the amount and quality of RNA they’re looking for. So, not only is top-notch RNA in demand, […]
RNA Pol II Calls the Shots in Random Monoallelic ExpressionAugust 15, 2011Just because two things ultimately do the same thing doesn’t mean they’re equivalent. Take Facebook and MySpace, for example. Researchers from the University of Washington say that imprinting and random allele-specific expression have two very different mechanisms, even though the outcome—only one of the two alleles of a gene is translated—is the same. H3K9me3 and […]
