Small Pores Provide Smoother 5-hmC ExperienceDecember 16, 2010Small pores aren’t just highly sought after in the cosmetics industry. They can really lend a hand in smoothing out the rougher epigenetics experimental challenges researchers face nowadays. Just ask Dr. Meni Wanunu and Marija Drndic at the University of Pennsylvania, along with colleagues from New England Biolabs, Boston University, and Temple University, who put […]
miR-200a Takes Down Cancerous Stem-like TransitionDecember 15, 2010There’s been a deafening buzz lately surrounding a new focus of epigeneticists known as the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). EMT, the gateway between normal epithelial cells and those that gain mesenchymal properties, is thought to be the point where cancer metastasis kicks off. And now a University of Hong Kong team, led by Hongping Xia reports […]
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. […]
Enriching 5-hmC Detection with SugarDecember 15, 2010In today’s more health conscious world, we’ve seen a surge in organic-everything. Enriching anything with sugar is a definite no-no. Good thing researchers play by their own rules. A University of Chicago research team led by Chuan He recently enriched the latest entrant to DNA methylation marks, 5-hmC, by enriching with glucose in a really […]
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, […]
COLDAIR Kicks Off Histone Methylation Prep for WinterDecember 2, 2010As winter winds turn our noses into Rudolph lookalikes, flowering plants get busy at the epigenetic level. At the onset of winter, plants in temperate regions, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, undergo a process called vernalization where they prep to quickly flower once spring rolls back around. As Jae Bok Heo and Sibum Sung at the […]
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 […]
Leukemia ALL Because of microRNA-125bNovember 30, 2010In a courtroom drama, sometimes the facts are so cut and dried that the defendant’s fate is all but sealed. New research from Marina Bousquet, a Lodish lab member at the Whitehead Institute, makes a strong case that miR-125b is essentially a smoking gun that causes leukemia. miR-125b is overexpressed in several different types of […]
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 […]