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 […]
How’s That For Gratitude: let-7 miRNA Targets Dicer’s Coding SequenceSeptember 30, 2008Recent evidence has shown that the let-7 miRNA bites the hand that feeds it . . . and in an unconventional way. By searching for short sequences conserved at the nucleotide level in the coding regions of 17 species, Hilary Coller and co-workers at Princeton University identified three let-7 target sites within the coding sequence […]
DNA Methylation Detection Goes Small TimeSeptember 28, 2008A sensitive new nanotechnology assay might represent a “quantum leap” in DNA methylation detection. The technique, which was developed by Vasudev Bailey and co-workers at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, uses quantum dots-fluorescent nanocrystals of a semiconductor material-to selectivel detect and quantify minute amounts of methylated DNA. As in methylation-specific PCR (MSP), sample […]
