Stem Cell Conference Highlights TimelineSeptember 4, 2013Stem Cells are a hot topic these days. Here we provide a history of epigenetic breakthroughs in this interdisciplinary field as told through our Conference Coverage.
Webinar: Life Long Changes in DNA Methylation & ncRNAs in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)August 22, 2013Western University’s Ben Laufer (Ph.D. Candidate) discusses how bioinformatic software was used to establish that even moderate exposure to alcohol during pregnancy, equivalent to a few beers every now and then, can produce profound and heritable variations in development, behaviour, and learning that are maintained in the exposed fetus for a lifetime by altered epigenetic […]
R-loops: RNA-DNA Hybrids Making Noise on Silenced GenesAugust 21, 2013Prader-Willi syndrome and Angelman syndrome are like two-peas-in-a-pod, the textbook cases of the power of genomic imprinting. However, some consider them to be distinct genetic disorders that are grouped together, as Dr. Janine LaSalle (UC Davis) puts it; “Only because of the shared chromosomal location of deletions to 15q11-13 and ‘quirky’ oppositely imprinted inheritance patterns.” […]
Purity By Design – Zymo Research Cleans Up DNA for Epigenetic AnalysisAugust 6, 2013Question the design of your spin column. All spin columns are not created equal, and designs from some other companies may result in buffer retention, even after centrifugation. The buffer carry-over can contain high concentrations of salts, detergents, and other buffer components that are eventually eluted from the column along with your DNA or RNA […]
Epigenetics goes Viral: Herpes the Histone HijackerJuly 25, 2013By the age of 40 most of us will be infected with human cytomegalovirus (hCMV), which is a human herpes virus. Pretty scary, eh? But fear not, hCMV infections are usually harmless. However, it still posses a significant public health risk as the virus remains the leading infectious cause of birth defects and a serious […]
How Active are Your HDACs? Abcam HDAC & SIRT Activity Assay KitsJuly 25, 2013Based on their booming popularity lately, it seems that histone deacetylases (HDACs) and sirtuins (SIRTs) lead pretty active epigenetic lives. As the experiments continue, there are several reasons why the epigenetics research community would want to keep tabs on what HDACs and SIRTs are doing including: Assessing HDAC or SIRT purification Screening for HDAC/SIRT inhibitors […]
Epigenetics: Damage Control in the Cell with Dr. Jim HaberJuly 25, 2013Dr. Haber discusses how normal cells deal with DNA damage and genomic integrity; and how those systems go awry in cancer cells. Epigenetics: Damage Control in the Cell Well, I work in an area of DNA repair. And what we have come to realize over the last decade is how these repair mechanisms prevent cells […]
The Dynamic EpigenomeJuly 24, 2013EpiGenie recently reviewed the text Epigenetics by Jorg Tost. Here is a more in depth summary of one the chapters provided courtesy of JA Gill who is molecular biologist at NOAA in the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, to give you a little sneak peek into what the whole book is all about: The Dynamic Epigenome: […]
It’s a Histone-Regulate-Histone World Out ThereJuly 9, 2013The central dogma has taken quite a beating thanks to epigenetics rule-bending ways. With all the cross talk and looping going on it’s hard to tell who’s the boss these days. In their recent review, Mahajan and Mahajan from the Moffit Cancer Centre in Florida discuss the implications of their latest finding (Nature Structural & […]
The Epigenetics of Stressed-Out PlantsJuly 2, 2013Stress is something that we’re all familiar with. A number of landmark studies on the effects of stress have been done in mammals. But it turns out that our cousins-from-another-ancestor don’t have dream lives either. Life is tough out there for a plant; you’re limited to one location where the conditions can change drastically over […]