Purity By Design – Zymo Research Cleans Up DNA for Epigenetic AnalysisAugust 6, 2013Question the design of your spin column. All spin columns are not created equal, and designs from some other companies may result in buffer retention, even after centrifugation. The buffer carry-over can contain high concentrations of salts, detergents, and other buffer components that are eventually eluted from the column along with your DNA or RNA […]
MeCP2, Rett Syndrome and Getting to Know the Brain with Dr. Adrian BirdAugust 6, 2013Dr. Adrian Bird discusses what MeCP2 has to do with Rett Syndrome, and researchers still have a long way to go towards understanding the human brain. MeCP2, Rett Syndrome and Getting to Know the Brain with Dr. Adrian Bird I think the protein we work on, MeCP2, which recognizes methylated DNA, we knew it recognized […]
Epigenetics goes Viral: Herpes the Histone HijackerJuly 25, 2013By the age of 40 most of us will be infected with human cytomegalovirus (hCMV), which is a human herpes virus. Pretty scary, eh? But fear not, hCMV infections are usually harmless. However, it still posses a significant public health risk as the virus remains the leading infectious cause of birth defects and a serious […]
CRISPRi: The User-Friendly Transcriptional RepressorJuly 25, 2013Usually when you think of the immune system it isn’t at the level of our bacterial friends. But “prokaryotes have evolved diverse RNA-mediated systems that use short CRISPR RNAs (crRNAs) and Cas (CRISPR-associated) proteins to detect and defend against invading DNA elements” This system, also known as the CRISPR/Cas system, is a prokaryotic immune system […]
How Active are Your HDACs? Abcam HDAC & SIRT Activity Assay KitsJuly 25, 2013Based on their booming popularity lately, it seems that histone deacetylases (HDACs) and sirtuins (SIRTs) lead pretty active epigenetic lives. As the experiments continue, there are several reasons why the epigenetics research community would want to keep tabs on what HDACs and SIRTs are doing including: Assessing HDAC or SIRT purification Screening for HDAC/SIRT inhibitors […]
Epigenetics: Damage Control in the Cell with Dr. Jim HaberJuly 25, 2013Dr. Haber discusses how normal cells deal with DNA damage and genomic integrity; and how those systems go awry in cancer cells. Epigenetics: Damage Control in the Cell Well, I work in an area of DNA repair. And what we have come to realize over the last decade is how these repair mechanisms prevent cells […]
Vitamin C in Media Critical for ES Cell 5hmCJuly 24, 2013Whether its pop culture (like the ongoing royal baby mania) or cell culture, there’s no denying the enormous impact that ‘media’ has on our life. In fact, new evidence shows that a little Vitamin C in cell culture media can influence mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells, like typical pre-teens, to undergo a blastocyst-like identity crisis. […]
The Dynamic EpigenomeJuly 24, 2013EpiGenie recently reviewed the text Epigenetics by Jorg Tost. Here is a more in depth summary of one the chapters provided courtesy of JA Gill who is molecular biologist at NOAA in the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, to give you a little sneak peek into what the whole book is all about: The Dynamic Epigenome: […]
Placental miRNAs Predict Infant BehaviorJuly 18, 2013Many parents consider their children’s behavior to be a bit of a mystery, (just ask anyone who has shared a plane ride with an unruly toddler) but new miRNA research hints that it may soon be possible to predict your child’s behavioral traits by a simple non-invasive test right after birth. A fortune telling team […]
EpiGenie Guide: RNA Immunoprecipitation (RIP) and BeyondJuly 10, 2013RNA binding proteins (RBPs) play important roles in many cellular and disease processes, together with their DNA binding brethren, they compromise almost one quarter of annotated human genes. The tools used to understand when and where these proteins bind and interact with RNAs in the cell have lagged behind those for protein-DNA interactions, although they […]