Epimutation: The New Risk Factor on the BRCA1 BlockNovember 18, 2010BRCA1, (breast cancer susceptibility gene 1), is involved in repairing damaged DNA or destroying cells when the DNA is beyond repair. Women with mutations in the BRCA1 gene have a predisposition to developing breast and ovarian cancer. OK, that wasn’t necessarily a newsflash, but wait… EpiGenie reader, Alexander Dobrovic and his team at the Peter […]
Zymo’s Quest 5-hmC Detection Kit Covers All the BasesNovember 10, 2010If you’re kicking off an expedition to explore the great hydroxymethylated unknown, make sure you’re geared up with the right equipment. Until recently, 5-hmC detection methods could only give you a general idea of the hydroxymethylation profile of your sample, but the new Quest 5-hmC Detection Kit™ let’s you see exactly where those 5-hmC marks […]
Stem Cells Heartbroken Without miR-499November 8, 2010How can you mend a broken heart? Well if researchers at Stanford University are right, then one day all you’ll need are some stem cells and miR-499 to cure a bad case of heartache (well, at least the kind that follows a heart attack. The bad breakup kind will still be up to relationship experts […]
Nucleosome Positions Are Cloudy With Chance of StabilityNovember 5, 2010It’s all about perspective. Like a funhouse mirror that makes you look fat or skinny depending on how it’s curved, it seems there’s some controversy on the subject of nucleosome positioning based on how results get interpreted. So, are nucleosomes stable or do they move around? In this contributed piece, Istvan Ladunga from the University […]
Prions Take Epigenetics to the ExtremeOctober 28, 2010Yeah, we know that somewhere between the X-games and base-jumping light beer ads, the term “Extreme” got a little played out. But, in their Perspective piece in Science, Randal Halfmann and Susan Lindquist make the case that certain proteins with unique folding properties, called prions, deserve the “extreme” label. Prions are proteins that are stably […]
