CSI’s Newest Crime-Solving Tool: miRNAsFebruary 17, 2010The TV franchise CSI: Crime Scene Investigation makes it seem like analyzing biological samples in a criminal investigation is as simple as pushing a button on a fancy gizmo and having the results printed out within seconds. (Of course, they also solve complex mysteries in under an hour every week, so I guess you can’t […]
Nature and Nurture Walking the Same Path?February 11, 2010Ever notice how it gets more interesting when there’s more than just black or white, love or hate, good or evil? The real action seems to take place in the gray areas. It seems true for methylated alleles as well. A recent paper looking into genomic imprinting found new evidence that both genomic and environmental […]
State of Methylome Analysis: Genome-Wide Methylation Techniques ReviewFebruary 11, 2010The State of the Union Address and the drama/commentaries that accompany it have come come and gone, but a fresh Nature Review produced by USC’s Peter Laird now provides the epigenetics community with a State of Methylome Analysis. For the epigenetics researcher, it is every bit as insightful but won’t take as much time to […]
Histone Mods Choose Alternative Splicing LifestyleFebruary 8, 2010We can’t say we were surprised to hear that histone mods lead an alternative lifestyle—not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s been theoretically shown that nucleosomes and their histone marks are involved in splicing by crunching data from previous experiments. Now, scientists at NCI, the University of Toronto, and the University of Texas Health […]
Methylome Stays Fashionable Throughout DifferentiationFebruary 5, 2010Our fashion sense evolves as we do. Just as you may trade your flip-flops for a business suit as you climb the corporate ladder, DNA methylation changes its style in cells that become more committed. To size up these methylation changes during differentiation, researchers at the UCSD Department of Reproductive Medicine and GIS in Singapore […]
