epigenetics

Epigenetics and ncRNA Headlines

Get all the latest highlights from the literature and special features covering trending epigenetics, ncRNA, and gene regulation research.

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Linking RNA Modifications and Stem Cell Pluripotency

November 12, 2015

Recent studies reported here at Epigenie have identified N6-methyladenosine (m6A) as a highly dynamic RNA modification that influences all aspects of RNA biology. Furthermore, an interesting study in mouse and human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) has indicated a role for N6-methyladenosine in the switch between ESC pluripotency and differentiation. Cool stuff indeed, but whate regulates N6-methyladenosine deposition […]

More Insights into Sperm Epigenomics: Histone Methylation Takes It Solo Transgenerationally

November 12, 2015

While CpG methylation has received the seminal fame of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, it seems that other players in the epigenome are just as capable. Sperm miRNAs have taken the solo spotlight in highlighting the mechanisms and distinction between transgenerational inheritance and intergenerational effect, but now histone methylation steps up to the plate leading us to […]

Astrocyte microRNAs Welcome Metastatic Cancer Cells to the Brain

November 12, 2015

If asked what to bring on a fishing trip in winter, your answer probably wouldn’t be a bathing suit and sunblock. Likewise, when cancer cells metastasize, they need the right equipment to reside in unfamiliar organs; in other words, they must adapt their expression programs to accommodate their new microenvironment. How they do this is […]

Sperm miRNA Drives Intergenerational Stress Response

October 30, 2015

Stress is something that we’re all too familiar with, but its impact across generations has remained controversial. The distinction between intergenerational effect and transgenerational inheritance is particularly important to understand the differences between a direct effect on exposed gametes or indirect transmission to unexposed gametes. However, the molecular mechanisms behind both phenomena have received much […]

DNA Methylation Changes in Blood Predict Breast Cancer Metastasis

October 22, 2015

Mention the word ‘surveillance’, and the people around you are likely to feel uneasy. But methods to monitor and predict the development of cancer are essential to provide the correct treatment at the right time. Now researchers from the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona show that assessing changes to DNA methylation directly in blood […]

Validating GWAS with Epigenome Editing

October 10, 2015

GWASs (genome-wide association studies) have found a lot of genetic variants associated with various traits and diseases. But GWASs suffer from that old weakness, the mantra of every good scientist: correlation does not imply causation. The problem gets even worse when you find out most GWAS variants are in non-coding regions of DNA, meaning they […]

MicroRNA Isoforms Distinguish Between Breast Cancer Subtypes

October 6, 2015

Much like the early explorers who set out to find a new trade route to Asia and accidentally stumbled across the Americas, researchers mapping the transcriptome have come across some big surprises. Recently, Isidore Rigoutsos’s lab showed that the expression of microRNA isoforms (called ‘isomiRs’) and tRNAs depends on sex, population, and race. Now, this […]

Stressed Nucleosomes Linked to Depression

October 6, 2015

Have you ever felt stressed and even depressed? Well, a new study linking stress-induced depressive behaviors to changes in nucleosome positioning suggests that in order to relax yourself, you may first need to relax your chromatin. Susceptibility to major depressive disorder (MDD) depends on genetic variability but also on environmental factors such as a stressful […]

New Reporter System Captures DNA Methylation in Real Time

October 1, 2015

If a picture is worth a thousand words then surely a video must be worth more? So far, our knowledge about DNA methylation has been limited to a comic strip of static images at different stages. That may all be about to change with a new tool reported by the lab of Rudolf Jaenisch, which […]

Microfluidic ChIP Makes a Few Cells Go a Long Way

September 11, 2015

Chromatin immunoprecipitation (or ChIP) is a handy technique to study epigenetic profiles, but only if you have enough cells. The main problem with ChIP is that it can be a “greedy” technique that uses large numbers of cells while giving back the bare minimum of DNA as a result. This is problematic for the study of genome-wide […]