Influenza Dodges Antiviral Response with Histone DisguiseMarch 22, 2012Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they say. But instead of flattery, the influenza virus (and maybe many other viruses) imitates histones to make people sick. That kind of flattery we could do without. Researchers in NY and the U.K. discovered that influenza A (H3N2)—one of the strains that cause seasonal flu outbreaks—hijacks the […]
ChIP and Discs: Porvair’s Chromatrap® ChIP Kits Break through the NoiseMarch 22, 2012Over the last decade, the ChIP process has seen more enhancements than the Orange County Housewives. Improved antibodies, beads, and fine-tuned buffers—they’ve all ChIP’d in to take this useful method primetime in labs all over the globe. But there’s always room for improvement. Turning Up the Pull Down for Small Sample ChIP Some of the […]
Bivalent PREs Protected by Perfect TimingMarch 21, 2012There’s no substitute for good timing. It’s a trait that can keep you out of a dangerous situation, or make you look good on the dance floor. But for cells it’s also critical for maintaining epigenetic states during replication. Italian researchers at the IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation recently identified a critical time window right before […]
Webinar: Global and Locus-Specific 5-hmC DetectionMarch 21, 2012New England Biolabs is hosting a free webinar titled: Global and locus specific 5-hydroxymethylcytosine detection and quantification Tues. March, 27th 2012 at 9am PDT It will discuss simple and quick enzymatic methods for global, as well as sequence-specific, determination of both DNA modifications throughout various genomes. T4 phage B-glucosyltransferase has emerged as the enzyme of […]
Nutritional Epigenetics: Eating For Two (Generations)March 20, 2012A new study on pigs (used as models for humans) suggests that what you eat could affect your grandchildren much later on. Pigs who ate a special “methyl” diet had “grandpigs” with different DNA methylation and gene expression patterns than the DNA methylation patterns in the control group. Sure, the findings could help researchers build […]
BrdU Kicks Out DNA Methylation and Kicks Off Stem Cell DifferentiationMarch 7, 2012For many things in life, convenience comes at a cost. Like living in a great city with everything at your doorstep, but the rents are sky-high. A new report says that the use of BrdU, a popular tool for detecting replicating cells (such as neural stem cells in the brain), also comes with a cost, […]
3.7M CpGs Await with Improved Methyl-Seq Target EnrichmentMarch 3, 2012March 3, 2012 Instead of sequencing (and paying for, managing, storing, and analyzing) everything, target enrichment blazes through samples like a combine, harvesting for regions of interest. Even as sequencing costs drop towards that “$1,000 genome” level, enriching for select targets makes a lot of sense, especially if you only want to look at a […]
Epigenetics at the Intersection of Environment and SelectionFebruary 28, 2012One of the most fascinating things about epigenetics is the implication it has for inheritance and evolution. Theories and hypotheses are everywhere, of course, but until Sir Richard Branson launches a Virgin Time Travel business, actually measuring the changes from thousands of years of natural selection will remain a pretty tall order. Two recent papers […]
Epigenetic Regulation of Gene ExpressionFebruary 25, 2012EpiGenie recently reviewed the epigenetic text book RNA and the Regulation of Gene Expression. Here we give you a small taste of the content found inside with a summary of one of the chapters: Epigenetic Regulation of Gene Expression by Kevin Morris This chapter outlines the fundamental aspects of epigenetic regulation as it relates to […]
Small RNA-mediated Gene ActivationFebruary 25, 2012EpiGenie recently reviewed the epigenetic text RNA and the Regulation of Gene Expression by Kevin Morris. To give you a small taste of the material covered in the book, here is a summary of one of the chapters: Small RNA-mediated Gene Activation by Long-Cheng Li Noncoding RNAs (ncRNA) which, by definition, do not code for […]