Targeted Bisulfite Sequencing with Padlock ProbesDecember 8, 2009A rising star in the epigenetics field, Dr. Kun Zhang joined the UCSD faculty in 2007 after a post-doc with George Church at Harvard. Engaging in a little friendly competition with his former mentor, Zhang published a technique for targeted bisulfite sequencing using padlock probes (Nat. Biotechnol. 2009, 27, 353) at the same time the […]
LNA miR-122 Inhibitors Put HCV in Lockdown in vivoDecember 3, 2009miR-122 is a talented regulator. Sure it can negatively regulate gene expression by binding 3’ UTRs of target mRNAs, but it’s also shown that it can bind 5’ UTRs in the HCV genome just as well, and act as a positive regulator, giving the virus a hand with replicating its genome. Facilitating viral replication? Well, […]
Pre-miRNA Importin and Exportin Strong As EverDecember 2, 2009In today’s global economy, imports and exports can ebb and flow dramatically depending on economic conditions. But in the fine-tuned cellular economy, where supply-demand runs the show, miRNA Importin and Exportin operate with consistency that would have most economists envious. When pre-miRNAs are shipped from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. Exportin-5 escorts the ~65 nt […]
ChIPing Away at Small Samples with Direct SequencingDecember 1, 2009One rarely hears mention of deep sequencing without “more” being dropped into the sentence. More coverage, more depth,…more sample? That’s right. As valuable as next generation sequencing platforms have become, those library construction protocols demand a fair amount of sample. Often more than can be coaxed out of a biopsy, or other small cell population. […]
Bulletproof Your Bisulfite Conversion: Key Considerations from the ExpertsDecember 1, 2009There’s a lot of talk out there about bisulfite conversion, how useful it is, how it’s the “Gold Standard,” how laborious it is, how rough it is on your samples, but the reality of it is that there probably isn’t any better way to prep your samples for single nucleotide resolution methylation profiling, so don’t […]