DNA Methylation Changes in CancerOctober 29, 2011EpiGenie ran recently ran a review of the new text Epigenetics: A Reference Manual. Now, to present a little taste of what the book has to offer, here’s a summary of one of the chapters. DNA Methylation Changes in Cancer By Samson Mani and Zdenko Herceg Epigenetic mechanisms can contribute to each step of cancer […]
EpiGenie Review: Environmental Links to Epigenetics and CancerOctober 27, 2011If our daily environment can lead to cancer, and it can also alter our epigenetics, then it only makes sense that there is a connection between all three things. Here are the articles EpiGenie has written about showing the evidence linking environmental factors, and epigenetic mechanisms together with cancer. Environmental – Epigenetic Link to Cancer […]
Born to Lose: Histone Mods Tag Stem Cells for DNA Methylation of miRNA Loci in CancerOctober 12, 2011It’s usually not hard to spot when things seem like they’re destined for failure. Like you ne’er do well cousin, or an American car from the 80’s. Other times, closer examination is required to find the seeds of a problem. That’s what it took for scientists to uncover how some harmless embryonic stem cells (ESCs) […]
EpiGenie Review: Epigenetic Cancer Therapies and DiagnosticsOctober 10, 2011Nearly everyone has been affected by cancer in some way or another. That’s why we’re so stoked to see all of the amazing breakthroughs in cancer knowledge coming from epigenetic research these days. Will it lead to treatments or cures anytime soon? Who knows, but it sure seems like we’re on the right track. Just […]
RNA Pol II Calls the Shots in Random Monoallelic ExpressionAugust 15, 2011Just because two things ultimately do the same thing doesn’t mean they’re equivalent. Take Facebook and MySpace, for example. Researchers from the University of Washington say that imprinting and random allele-specific expression have two very different mechanisms, even though the outcome—only one of the two alleles of a gene is translated—is the same. H3K9me3 and […]
Targeting Brd4 Fends Off Acute Myeloid LeukemiaAugust 3, 2011Chromatin mods should be good drug targets for cancer therapies, but sort of like Facebook’s privacy policy, cancer epigenetics is so complex that no one completely understands all the nuances. So instead of spending time on the usual epigenetic suspects, researchers at Cold Spring Harbor in New York kept an open mind and performed an […]
Cancers Ban Erythropoietin with DNA MethylationJuly 27, 2011Most folks know the hormone erythropoietin (aka EPO) because of its use as a “doping” substance by athletes to illegally gain an edge on their competition through enhanced red blood cell production. Even though we all make at least a little bit of the stuff naturally in lots of our tissues, it seems that athletic […]
Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma’s Trouble with Histone ModificationsJuly 27, 2011They say it’s the quiet ones that you have to watch out for. Canadian researchers may have had that in mind when they pondered the genetic causes of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Through some extra digging (and sequencing), they uncovered several mutant genes that had remained hidden until now, including some that have roles in histone […]
Cancer Cells Keep Their Methylome Options OpenJuly 6, 2011As new research finds tumor cells don’t like to be tied to just one methylation pattern, they prefer a variety. In fact, that variation within tumors gives cells a big leg-up in challenging environments, and possibly even helps them avoid detection and treatment. Building on their earlier work on CpG shores and stochastic variation, the […]
Foursome of DNA Methylation Subgroups Found in Colorectal CancerJune 16, 2011As if one kind of colorectal cancer (CRC) isn’t bad enough, new research has uncovered four DNA methylation-based versions of the insidious disease. Our So-Cal neighbors, Toshinori Hinoue and Daniel Weisenberger and team over at the USC Epigenome Center cranked out genome-scale DNA methylation profiles for 125 colorectal tumor and 29 normal tissue samples. The […]