Inducible Models Breathe New Life into Epigenetic Inheritance StudiesOctober 8, 2013Food, toxins, and stress can all have enormous effects on the epigenome, but pinning down the true epigenetic mechanisms at work is the tricky part. While it’s been difficult to determine mechanisms of action in standard animal models, new ones have been developed using Tetracyline-induced systems, that make it much simpler to tease out how […]
Is Cancer an Epigenomic Disease?October 7, 2013Discovering what ‘causes’ cancer has been a goal as elusive as hitting the Lottery by playing only the numbers in your birthdate. To complicate matters, most cases are unique events within themselves, adding a layer of heterogeneity that leads to even more hair-pulling frustration among researchers. However, cutting edge research has now revealed a possible […]
SNPs, Nutrition, and DNA Methylation with Dr. Steven ZeiselOctober 4, 2013Dr. Steven Zeisel discusses the intersection of genetics and epigenetics in nutrition. SNPs, Nutrition, and DNA Methylation Well, we think that there are a number of genetic variants, single nucleotide polymorphisms. I’ll call them SNPs. These SNPs are extremely common in one carbon metabolism, especially among Caucasians. And we are reporting that these SNPs […]
Get the Lead Out of Your EpigenomeOctober 1, 2013What’s mainly orange, sometimes a little black, and usually obese? Congratulations if you guessed Agouti (Avy) mice! (And you may want to consider spending less time in a vivarium) These chubby little creatures are well established as environmental epigenetics models because a number of environmental exposures are known to alter DNA methylation at the Avy […]
Trinucleotide Repeat (TNR) Disease Cheat SheetSeptember 16, 2013Trinucleotide repeat (TNR) diseases are some of the latest disorders to be linked to epigenetic state. So Dr. Marguerite Evans-Galea and colleagues at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and The University of Melbourne, wrote up this review to act as a sort of cheat sheet for the mounting evidence of epigenetic mechanisms in TNR. This […]
Webinar: Epigenomics – One Molecule at a Time with Dr. Paul SolowaySeptember 16, 2013Dr. Paul Soloway, PhD discusses his latest work on technologies that enable the interrogation of epigenetic marks on a single molecule. **this webinar is no longer available** Epigenomic analyses are used for many applications, including discovering gene regulatory mechanisms; characterizing non-genetic transmission modes of adaptive and disease traits; identifying and detecting disease biomarkers; and for […]
Mind Games: Sorting Out Brain Cell-type Specific MethylationSeptember 10, 2013The human brain is the prime example of “highly specialized and diverse functions arising from the same genetic program.” But that comes at steep price. Our most complex organ is, well…very complex. Not only do it’s epigenetic marks constantly change both spatially and temporally but it’s also mainly and almost equally composed of two very […]
Priming Cancer Therapies with Epigenetics with Dr. Peter JonesSeptember 9, 2013Dr. Peter Jones of the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at USC discusses the positive impact epigenetic therapies are having in the clinic. Priming Cancer Therapies with Epigenetics with Dr. Peter Jones Well, I think the thing that excites me the most is the increasing successes of epigenetic therapies in the clinic. And so I […]
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.
Genome-wide and Gene-specific Analysis of DNA MethylationSeptember 3, 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 a 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: Methods for […]
