Breaking Down miRNA MicroarraysApril 6, 2010As analysis of miRNAs becomes increasingly popular, the resulting flood of microarray products out there for miRNA profiling is enough to make your head spin. So how do you decide which ones to use? If you’ve been stressing over that question, you’ll be happy to know that some good folks at Cambridge Research Institute and […]
Transcription Enhancers Have an Oprah MomentMarch 30, 2010Not to get all “Oprah”, but sometimes, you need to let go of unstable elements in order to enhance your life. Researchers now report that this drama unfolds at the DNA level too. Here’s what they found: an unstable nucleosome sitting smack dab in the center of an enhancer can get kicked off to make […]
miRNA SNPs Here or There Can Make a Big DifferenceMarch 30, 2010One wrong snip from your barber might leave you with a bad hair day, but a genomic SNP in the wrong place, like a miRNA target site, can leave you in a much worse situation; with a predisposition to cancer. SNPs have been studied extensively in several diseases, but only recently have scientists started looking […]
Non-Coding RNAs in EpigeneticsMarch 30, 2010We interviewed John Mattick a few years back as we were getting ready to launch EpiGenie, but couldn’t manage to get the transcripts all edited and ready for show time. So, when we ran accross this interview in what was Invitrogen’s Quest magazine we were excited, then bummed because we didn’t run it first, then […]
Viral miRNA Social Networking via ExosomesMarch 29, 2010Just a few years ago miRNAs were viewed as pretty solitary transcripts, exhibiting their regulatory muti-tasking skills primarily within their micro-environments. Recent evidence however has shown that miRNAs can spring from their cellular confines when secreted in exosomes, our cells’ version of public transit. A few groups have hypothesized that these exosome-associated miRNAs might play […]
