Non-Invasive DNA Methylation Assay for Colorectal Cancer Now Available from LabCorpJuly 14, 2008Not even a month after announcing a reagent supply agreement with OncoMethylome Sciences, LabCorp has announced the commercial availability of the Methylation-Specific PCR Assay for monitoring the methylation status of Vimentin DNA. Marketed as ColoSure(TM) by LabCorp, the MSP Assay is being positioned for assessing any stage colorectal cancer in asymptomatic average risk patients who […]
ChIPs and MeDIP: ChIP Antibody Selection TipsJuly 9, 2008Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) remains a powerful method to characterize in vivo binding of DNA hugging proteins like histones and transcription factors and more recently has been used effectively for DNA methylation studies. The ChIP technique has been around since the days of big hair and “Miami Vice,” so we won’t review it here much, but […]
PatMAn and the Magnificent Seven Methylation ClassifiersJune 16, 2008It seems pattern recognition and supervised learning techniques are being applied to epigenetics research a lot nowadays. These advanced computational techniques that have proven useful in everything from homeland security to financial modeling are lending a hand to some of the challenges in epigenetics research. Recently we’ve seen them applied to miRNA discovery and target […]
The Evolution of DNA Methylation AnalysisMarch 12, 2008Since the advent of bisulfite conversion over 15 years ago, dozens of labs have streamlined the procedure, new patents have been filed, and numerous research kits with “new and improved” versions of the protocol have been launched, yet the core principal of the method remains the same: change a C to a U. Over the […]
That Stinks…Pollution Demethylating DNAJanuary 15, 2008As if making the air stink and harder to breathe wasn’t enough, researchers in Italy and Boston have found that when certain particulates from traffic exhaust increase, epigenetic effects can increase. They looked at the percent of methylated cytosines in Long Interspersed Nucleotide Elements (LINE-1) repeats, in leukocytes of elderly men taking part in a longitudinal study. […]
