m6A Enables XIST’s Repressive ExistenceSeptember 27, 2016Life can be hard out there for an X chromosome, particularly when faced with a well-known molecular form of sexual discrimination. The key to this repressive environment and resulting existential crisis is X-inactive specific transcript (XIST), a long non-coding (lnc)RNA known to undergo modifications such as cytosine methylation. However, RNA methylation is a rapidly evolving […]
Proteomic Analysis of Aging MSCs Reveals New Targets to Enhance Musculoskeletal TherapiesSeptember 27, 2016Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are surely the “workhorses” of both the body and the regenerative medicine field. They display multiple advantageous characteristics, including the ability to differentiate into musculoskeletal tissues, that make MSCs the go-to cell type for tissue-engineering solutions for disease/age-related disorders. Furthermore, many tissues require the proper on-going function of tissue-resident MSCs to […]
eBook: ChIP Seq Data Analysis Tools & DatabasesSeptember 13, 2016Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a powerful workflow for analysis of chromatin structure. The antibody-based pulled down of protein-DNA interactions is only half the process. Once the genomic regions bound by a protein are enriched and sequenced, bioinformatics tools and pipelines are necessary to identify, characterize, and compare these regions between samples. This ‘dry’ side of the ChIP workflow is […]
Multiplexed CRISPR sgRNAs: Express One Get One FreeSeptember 13, 2016For all the focus on making CRISPR more accurate, effective, compact, and versatile, one key feature has remained elusive: the two-for-one special. In a way, it’s ironic that CRISPR multiplexing – i.e., expressing multiple sgRNAs from the same promoter to target multiple DNA sites – is not more straightforward. After all, natural CRISPR arrays are […]
DNA Methylation Detects Ovarian Cancer’s Tissue of OriginSeptember 13, 2016While epigenetic variation underlies the origin of many cancers, underlying epigenetic similarities can reveal cancer’s tissue of origin. High-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC) is the most common and serious type of epithelial ovarian cancer. However, there are two competing hypotheses about which tissue HGSC arises from. Ovarian surface epithelia (OSE) has been implicated, but the […]