Pursuit of the Moving miRNA TargetApril 11, 2008Since 3’ UTRs were found to contain docking sites for miRNAs, labs with computational muscle around the world have been chipping away the target predication dilemma, but like any game, it’s hard to win when you don’t know the rules. It’s even harder when the rules are being rewritten weekly which is why we have […]
RIP it Good: The Rise of Ribonucleicprotein IPApril 5, 2008For years, transcriptional regulation took center stage in studies of gene expression, and the nuances of which transcription factor binds to which DNA sequence under which circumstances dominated the dialogue of molecular biologists. In recent years, a supporting actor has threatened to steal the show: enter, post-transcriptional regulation. The idea that messenger RNA utilization could […]
The Evolution of DNA Methylation AnalysisMarch 12, 2008Since the advent of bisulfite conversion over 15 years ago, dozens of labs have streamlined the procedure, new patents have been filed, and numerous research kits with “new and improved” versions of the protocol have been launched, yet the core principal of the method remains the same: change a C to a U. Over the […]
Espionage, Genetics, and miRNAMarch 12, 2008George Adrian Calin received both his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at Carol Davila University of Medicine in Bucharest, Romania, where he started cytogenetics work with Dr Dragos Stefanescu. After completing cancer genomics training in Dr. Massimo Negrini’s laboratory at University of Ferrara, Italy, he became a postdoctoral fellow at Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia, PA, […]
That Stinks…Pollution Demethylating DNAJanuary 15, 2008As if making the air stink and harder to breathe wasn’t enough, researchers in Italy and Boston have found that when certain particulates from traffic exhaust increase, epigenetic effects can increase. They looked at the percent of methylated cytosines in Long Interspersed Nucleotide Elements (LINE-1) repeats, in leukocytes of elderly men taking part in a longitudinal study. […]
