Intron-Encoded miRNA Sidekick to the RescueOctober 15, 2008Every great star has a sidekick who sometimes threatens to steal the show: Batman had Robin, Sherlock Holmes had Dr. Watson, and Hillary had Bill. Likewise, some proteins appear to have an intron-encoded miRNA sidekick that neutralizes the “bad guys” so that the protein can effectively perform its cellular function, as demonstrated in a recent […]
Good Twin/Bad Twin: Is Epigenetics to Blame?October 13, 2008The Evil Twin is a staple of the soap opera genre—you know, the long-lost, villainous sister who kidnaps her virtuous twin and assumes her life, only to be discovered years later when the Good Twin escapes from imprisonment on an alien-inhabited desert isle. But in real life, how can identical twins with the same genes […]
Susan Clark: Leading Ladies in Epigenetics ResearchOctober 8, 2008A native of Australia, Susan J. Clark obtained her PhD in 1982 from the University of Adelaide. For the next 8 years, Dr. Clark worked in the biotech industry before returning to basic research where she was instrumental in developing the bisulphite sequencing method for DNA methylation analysis in the early 90s. Dr. Clark is […]
ncRNAs Pave the Way for Chromatin RemodelingOctober 6, 2008Researchers have been puzzled by the discovery of several-kilobase-long, polyadenylated transcripts that overlap functional coding regions but do not themselves encode proteins. A recent Nature paper by Kouji Hirota, Kunihiro Ohta, and co-workers at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute (Japan), the University of Tokyo, and Boston College indicates that some of these ncRNAs are transcriptional […]
RNA-Directed DNA deMethylation: An Undiscovered Country in the RNA World?October 1, 2008Let’s face it: it’s an RNA world. In addition to RNA’s many genetic, catalytic, and structural roles, the discovery of small non-coding RNAs has unveiled an entire continent of epigenetic functions. Small RNAs act in processes such as mRNA destruction, translational inhibition, and DNA methylation. Now it appears that, at least in plants, small RNAs […]
