Nutritional Epigenetics: Eating For Two (Generations)March 20, 2012A new study on pigs (used as models for humans) suggests that what you eat could affect your grandchildren much later on. Pigs who ate a special “methyl” diet had “grandpigs” with different DNA methylation and gene expression patterns than the DNA methylation patterns in the control group. Sure, the findings could help researchers build […]
BrdU Kicks Out DNA Methylation and Kicks Off Stem Cell DifferentiationMarch 7, 2012For many things in life, convenience comes at a cost. Like living in a great city with everything at your doorstep, but the rents are sky-high. A new report says that the use of BrdU, a popular tool for detecting replicating cells (such as neural stem cells in the brain), also comes with a cost, […]
3.7M CpGs Await with Improved Methyl-Seq Target EnrichmentMarch 3, 2012March 3, 2012 Instead of sequencing (and paying for, managing, storing, and analyzing) everything, target enrichment blazes through samples like a combine, harvesting for regions of interest. Even as sequencing costs drop towards that “$1,000 genome” level, enriching for select targets makes a lot of sense, especially if you only want to look at a […]
Epigenetics at the Intersection of Environment and SelectionFebruary 28, 2012One of the most fascinating things about epigenetics is the implication it has for inheritance and evolution. Theories and hypotheses are everywhere, of course, but until Sir Richard Branson launches a Virgin Time Travel business, actually measuring the changes from thousands of years of natural selection will remain a pretty tall order. Two recent papers […]
Epigenetic Regulation of Gene ExpressionFebruary 25, 2012EpiGenie recently reviewed the epigenetic text book RNA and the Regulation of Gene Expression. Here we give you a small taste of the content found inside with a summary of one of the chapters: Epigenetic Regulation of Gene Expression by Kevin Morris This chapter outlines the fundamental aspects of epigenetic regulation as it relates to […]