Promoter Targeted Small RNAs Lay a Big Smack Down on Gene Expression.March 31, 2009Sometimes to get the correct result, a researcher needs to knock a gene down. Not just a little knockdown, but like a Mike Tyson knockdown! (well, at least back in the days before the whole ear-biting thing.) Some clever scientists at The Scripps Research Institute may have found a way to do just that. By […]
RNAi Rescues DNA Methylation DefectsMarch 25, 2009Nowadays it seems like “interference” carries such negative connotations. RNAs aren’t really big meddlers. In fact, it’s RNAi that’s protecting genomes against the transgenerational loss of DNA methylation. A team of researchers in France and Spain has demonstrated that in Arabidopsis, the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery can remethylate target sequences that were hypomethylated by mutation […]
The PSA Debate and DNA Methylation BiomarkersMarch 25, 2009For many men, nothing can kick off a mid-life crisis quicker than a prostate exam. Middle-aged guys in sports cars everywhere dread reminders from their urologist for prostate checkups. Don’t even get us started on PSA’s infamous counterpart, the digital rectal exam. The prostate surface antigen (PSA) test was launched back in 1985 by Hybritech, […]
miR-101: RNA Guardian Of The Genome?March 9, 2009MicroRNA-101 (miR-101) is rapidly earning a place in the “Who’s Who” of tumor suppressor genes. In November, we told you how The Little RNA that Could wallops prostate cancer by repressing the histone methyltransferase EZH2. Now researchers at the University of Southern California have shown that miR-101 plays a similar role in the suppression of […]
Two Epigenetic Drugs Join Forces with Cisplatin to Knock Out CancerMarch 9, 2009Just when it seems that scientists are winning the fight against cancer, tumors hit below the belt by developing resistance to chemotherapies. But researchers at the University of Glasgow and TopoTarget Prolifix Ltd. have shown that delivering a 1-2 punch of epigenetic drugs could allow the chemotherapeutic agent cisplatin to knock out resistant tumors. Cisplatin, […]
ESC Pluripotency Players Take To RESTMarch 2, 2009The lab gloves came off in a recent Nature exchange on the putative role of the transcriptional repressor, REST, in embryonic stem cell pluripotency. In the left corner, Singh and colleagues, conducting experiments out of MD Anderson in the Lone Star State, published data in Nature back in May, 2008 indicating that REST may control […]
Nanopore Sequencing the 5th BaseMarch 2, 2009For the pipette-jockeys out there who have been toiling away with tedious bisulfite sequencing runs, MS-PCR, or Me-DIP protocols: Hang in there! It looks like help might soon be on the way. A group of Oxford researchers just published a method that uses nanopore technology to sequence single molecules of DNA, including 5-methylcytosine, all without […]
Integrated Epigenetic Profiling in Primary Human CellsFebruary 25, 2009The Costello Lab at UCSF is another of the four Reference Epigenome Mapping Centers (REMCs, not to be confused with REM although I’m sure Michael Stipe would be very proud of the work going on at the REMCs). According to Dr. Joseph Costello, his lab will be rolling up their sleeves with scientists at UC […]
miRNA Regulation Checks and Balances in Organ AdhesionFebruary 23, 2009We’re all asking ourselves these days, “But who regulates the regulators?” For miRNA, the answer may just be a consortium of genes both living and dead. A group of Toronto researchers exogenously expressed versican 3’UTR (a potential target for miR-199a*) hooked up to a reporter construct. While expression of the luciferase or GFP reporter was […]
HITS-CLIP Cracks The FOX2 Splicing CodeFebruary 23, 2009As crafty as its animal namesake, the cell-type-specific RNA splicing regulator FOX2 slips in and out of the transcriptome, causing the inclusion of one exon here or the exclusion of another there, with no apparent rhyme or reason. However, researchers at the Salk Institute and the University of California, San Diego recently outsmarted FOX2 by […]