Do Transcription Factors Occupy All their Binding Motifs in the Genome? Not quite.October 4, 2010A British team of researchers recently decided to take closer look at the role of DNA methylation in conserved consensus motifs. Dr. Roger Foo from the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge was nice enough to share a bit about their approach that recently published in BMC Genomics (Sept 2010) last week. Transcription factors recognise […]
O-allylhydroxylamine Threatens Bisulfite’s Gold Standard StatusSeptember 23, 2010Let’s get ready to rumble! A new reagent, O-allylhydroxylamine, has entered the ring to challenge bisulfite conversion as the undisputed champion of DNA methylation analysis. In the latest issue of Nucleic Acids Research, chemists from Ludwig-Maximillians University in Germany introduced a new chemical reagent that could be a game-changer for distinguishing between cytosine (C) and […]
Heterogeneous DNA Methylation and Biomarkers: It’s ComplicatedSeptember 23, 2010The state of the economy, global climate change, DNA methylation…These are all complicated issues. Well, we found one well-written review article by Thomas Mikeska, Ida Candiloro, and Alexander Dobrovic at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the University of Melbourne in Australia that tries to put one of those topics, DNA methylation in perspective, at […]
DNA Methylation Holds Steady in Body Mass IndexSeptember 17, 2010Mules are well known for being stubborn creatures, but they aren’t alone. It seems that resistance to change is something they may have in common with body weight and certain stretches of your epigenome. Andrew Feinberg and M. Daniele Fallin at Johns Hopkins University led several teams in a study that shows, for the first […]
Polymerase Furiosus Over Lack of Credit in Bisulfite SequencingSeptember 1, 2010At EpiGenie, we try to call attention not just to the big names in the field that nab most of the limelight, but also to the folks busting their pipettes day and night for new discoveries. So why not give a shout out to a workhorse in the most widely used method for methylation analysis, […]
Silencing of Ultraconserved ncRNAs Is Not So Golden in CancerAugust 31, 2010If you live near a construction site, are listening to one half of a cell-phone conversation in a movie theater, or stuck on an airliner next to a fussy infant, then for you silence may indeed be golden. But, for certain ultraconserved non-coding RNAs, transcriptional silencing can lead to a cellular uproar. A new article […]
DNA Methylation States Mix and Mingle on the Nuclear Dance FloorAugust 31, 2010Remember those lame junior high dances, where most of us stood silently and uncomfortably against the gym wall, watching our wilder classmates rock out to Bon Jovi on the dance floor? Some researchers think that methylated and unmethylated promoters in tumors segregate themselves in the same way: silenced genes gather in heterochromatin at the nuclear […]
The Epigenetics of Mental IllnessAugust 31, 2010Mental disorders like depression will likely affect 1/6 of Americans at some point in their life. That probability might be higher if you’re a Cleveland sports fan, but seriously, with mental illnesses affecting hundreds of millions of people globally each year, we’re glad to see an increasing focus on the epigenetics of these disorders. In […]
Mecp2, miR-212 Keep Cocaine Addiction In CheckAugust 18, 2010Anyone who’s ever seen an episode of Celebrity Rehab knows that addiction is a very complicated issue, and as scientists recently found out, even the molecular basis of addiction is no simple matter. A group led by Paul Kenny at Scripps Florida studied cocaine use in rats that were allowed to dose themselves with the […]
5-Hydroxymethylcytosine Gets SensitiveAugust 17, 2010One of the great things about science is that whenever a new problem presents itself, there are always some members of the community who set out to find innovative solutions. In this case, it’s been a bear to detect and quantify 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) but some cagey researchers at the Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich, […]