450K Hacked: ox-BS Gives Away 5hmC’s secretsSeptember 5, 2014Differentiating between DNA’s celebrity cytosine bases can be harder than remembering all the ‘celebrities’ caught in hollywood’s latest photo leak. But have no fear, because oxidative bisulfite conversion (ox-BS) is here to save the day in a reduced representation way. Normally, bisulfite conversion doesn’t produce a difference in readout between 5mC and 5hmC, but ox-BS overcomes this by treating the DNA […]
Get In Tune with Chromatin: Abcam High Sensitivity ChIP KitsSeptember 3, 2014Today’s epigenetics researchers need to squeeze every last bit of detail from the chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) experiments they run. That’s why Abcam launched their new High Sensitivity ChIP kits; to help bench scientists stay tuned in to what’s going on with the chromatin in their samples. Abcam High Sensitivity ChIP Kits sport some pretty nifty […]
EpiGenie Book Reviews: Epigenetics in PsychiatrySeptember 3, 2014Weighing in at just above 600 pages, Epigenetics in Psychiatry sets out to cover emerging research interests in the world of neuroepigenomics and it’s translation to the clinic. A collection of reviews, rather than a more standard textbook, it is written by researchers in the field with a focus on the background of their research […]
Chromatin Never Forgets to Stay in the LoopSeptember 3, 2014While DNA has long been thought of as the molecular sheriff of inheritance, the epigenome continues to unravel it’s mystery in a western film style, with chromatin as the lasso wielding cowboy that never lets past transgressions slide. It seems that the pericentric heterochromatin (PCH) gang has gone and looted chromatin of it’s transcriptional treasures by some organized crime. […]
Tumors Go Minimalist with DNA Methylation BlocksAugust 26, 2014It seems that cancer is joining the minimalist trend, and has recently been caught sporting a universal and distinct DNA methylation signature. A talented team from John Hopkins lead by epi-gurus Andrew Feinberg and Rafael Irizarry show that large hypomethylated blocks are a defining feature in a number of different human solid tumors. These hypomethylated blocks also […]
3D Epigenome Folding ModelsAugust 21, 2014Much like 3D pictures enhance the illusion of depth of picture perception, polymer physics can enhance the depth of organization of epigenomic landscape in topologically associated 3D loop domains. Eukaryotic chromatin is organized into topologically associated epigenomic domains. A team of French researchers led by Daniel Jost recently unveiled a new approach for modeling epigenomic […]
Alzheimer Disease Gets Brain Region Specific EWASAugust 17, 2014Epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) appear to be the natural evolution of GWAS that has given neuroscience a epigenomic renaissance. Jonathan Mill and team from the University of Exeter Medical School and King’s College London have shown that sometimes it’s best to cover all angles and in their latest report(s) offer up some new epigenetic targets for studying the neuroscience of Alzheimer […]
Online Stem Cell Diploma from University of Ulster 2014August 13, 2014The University of Ulster is offering an entirely online, postgraduate diploma course in Stem Cell Biology and it’s starting soon. The course is designed to allow students to break into, or advance in a career in the stem cell field. They’ve assembled a panel of international stem cell industry experts advising on the course content […]
Non-Watson-Crick Base Pairing in the miRNA Seed RegionAugust 12, 2014First epigenetics knocked Mendel off the high horse of simple inheritance and now it’s taking a shot at Watson and Crick. It seems that not even base-pairing is safe these days, with microRNA targeting demonstrating that it is anything but simple. In its latest political statement this member of the non-coding party has been caught […]
The Embryonic Journey of DNA Methylation DynamicsAugust 5, 2014Two recent Nature papers made big strides in understanding mammalian embryonic DNA methylation. The Meissner and Eggan team from Harvard focused in on CpG dynamics and how they compare to mice, specifically in terms of parental contribution. While the Qian and Tang team from Bejing examined how DNAm effects the epigenetic embryonic landscape in terms of histone […]