Two-factor authentication represents a modern approach to securing our digital lives from outside threats; however, research now suggests that this concept may not be so modern. A new study now reveals that male germ cells employ a piRNA-mediated epigenetic “two-factor authentication” strategy to secure the precisely timed DNA methylation-induced silencing of insider threats that impact […]
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N6-methyladenosine-modified CarRNAs Hit the Epigenetic Brake on Transcription
Nitrous systems, improved aerodynamics, and slick tires on your car may all help to quench your need for speed when you get behind the wheel; however, the need to slow down is just as critical in the world of gene regulation. Recently, a team of researchers has described how the modification of a racy subset […]
Junk Drawer No More: LINE-1 RNA Functions as a Chromatin Scaffold Critical to Early Development
Do you have a junk drawer at your house? Perhaps it’s full of old take-out menus, dead batteries, rubber bands, and other purposeless things? Since their discovery, transposable elements, including the LINE-1 retrotransposon, have been relegated to the “junk drawer” of the human genome. At best LINE-1 has been called useless, and at worst it […]
Passive Demethylation Drives Development
Ever taken one of those online personality tests, such as those that tell you if you’ve got a passive or active personality? Well researchers at Stanford set out to perform such a test, not on themselves, but to uncover the ‘personality’ of demethylation during development. DNA can be demethylated actively through the TET enzyme family, or passively during DNA […]
oxBS-Seq Breaks Through 5hmC Sequencing Barrier
5-Hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) has always been a bear to sequence, mostly because it’s virtually indistinguishable from its close relative, 5-methylcytosine (5mC) using classic bisulfite sequencing techniques. Now a new sample preparation method has hit the scene that can discriminate between cytosine, 5mC and 5hmC at single base resolution, called oxidative bisulfite sequencing (oxBS-Seq) that essentially smashes […]