You Are What Your Father Ate, TooDecember 30, 2010Several recent studies have shown that Mom’s diet at conception or during pregnancy can affect the epigenetics of her offspring. Now it’s Dad’s turn to share some of the responsibility as well. A new Cell paper by Oliver Rando at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and colleagues found that male mice fed a low-protein […]
Combinatorial Histone Interactions Put Antibodies’ Specificity in a BindDecember 24, 2010Whether you work in Hollywood or the research labs close by at UCLA, it seems like a good set of Abs can solve most problems. Unfortunately there’s no airbrushing when it comes to ChIP. Most ChIP antibodies are pretty good at recognizing the specific histone modification they were raised against, as a couple of recent […]
SILAC Offers a New Twist on Histone TurnoverDecember 15, 2010A new technique has arrived on the scene that makes life a little easier for those of you into studying histone turnover rates. Taking advantage of technologies used by our friends in proteomics, researchers at Princeton University explored the turnover of various histone proteins and how post-translational modifications (PTMs) alter the speed of that process. […]
Naughty and Nice ChIP AntibodiesDecember 9, 2010With Santa’s yearly gift giving spree fast approaching, kids everywhere are on their best behavior to avoid ending up on the “naughty list.” A consortium of chromatin researchers found out which ChIP antibodies are naughty or nice, by testing a ton of commercial antibodies raised against 3 histones with 57 different modifications in flies, worms, […]
Webinar: Chromatin Immunoprecipitation-Improved Approaches for the Analysis of Epigenetic Regulation at Single Loci and Genome-WideDecember 1, 2010This 50 minute presentation covers the basic concepts of ChIP and advances in technology, including genome-wide profiling. You’ll learn approaches to assay design, performance, and data analysis to help avoid the most common and some uncommon experimental pitfalls. Chromatin Biology Research and Development, EMD Millipore Presenter: John M. Rosenfeld, Ph.D. Format: Audio with Synchronized Slides, […]
H3K27ac Marks the Spot of Active EnhancersDecember 1, 2010News media always seem to focus on the negative . . . war, violence, men wearing kilts sans underwear through airport security lines on National Opt-Out Day. The same can be said about genetic elements that regulate transcription: the repressors seem to get all of the attention. Part of the reason is that enhancers are […]
Behind the Scenes Histone and DNA Methylation Regulation Tricks RevealedNovember 30, 2010Diehard fans cinema aren’t satisfied by just watching a movie; they want to know everything about it, including how those amazing special effects are pulled off. In much the same way, scientists at the University of Bergen in Norway noticed extensive gene expression reprogramming in their experiments with pre-cancerous prostate cells and wanted to get […]
Nucleosome Positions Are Cloudy With Chance of StabilityNovember 5, 2010It’s all about perspective. Like a funhouse mirror that makes you look fat or skinny depending on how it’s curved, it seems there’s some controversy on the subject of nucleosome positioning based on how results get interpreted. So, are nucleosomes stable or do they move around? In this contributed piece, Istvan Ladunga from the University […]
Prions Take Epigenetics to the ExtremeOctober 28, 2010Yeah, we know that somewhere between the X-games and base-jumping light beer ads, the term “Extreme” got a little played out. But, in their Perspective piece in Science, Randal Halfmann and Susan Lindquist make the case that certain proteins with unique folding properties, called prions, deserve the “extreme” label. Prions are proteins that are stably […]
Pardon the Epigenetic DisruptionOctober 28, 2010One of the great things about stem cells is how they seem to do just about anything. These days, stem cells have more Apps than an iPad, and in the new issue of Science we find one more: using stem cells to screen for “epigenetic disruptors”. The proposed idea is to use the built-in developmental […]
