Context Is Key for miRNA Target SitesNovember 4, 2009If your boss were to tell you that you’re acting like a real ass, you’d probably start packing your desk, unless you’re auditioning for Eeyore in that upcoming Winnie the Pooh play in which case you’d be stoked. So much in life is all about the context…and miRNA regulation is no exception. A recent report […]
Dr. Adrian Bird: Interview With A Pioneer in Methylated DNAOctober 21, 2009One of the things we enjoy most at EpiGenie is chatting with the researchers who are driving epigenetics forward. So, naturally we were stoked to come across an interview with Dr. Adrian Bird in PLoS Genetics. Adrian Bird is the Buchanan Chair of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh and is also Director of the […]
How Low Can They Go: Unusually Small RNAOctober 21, 2009Let’s all do the ncRNA limbo! They may not be as festive as the dance at the office holiday party, but non-coding RNAs are really getting down…in size anyway! It seems every few months, we’re learning about a new class of RNAs that’s even shorter than before. Recent work from Bino John’s group at the […]
Epigenetic Cancer Therapy – Not Just for DNA AnymoreOctober 14, 2009Researchers studying cancer epigenetics therapies dream of days when we might be able to control DNA methylation like our car stereos…less treble, little more bass. 5 Aza is one of the early leaders in the epi pipeline, and like a lot of therapeutics out there, we learn more about how it impacts other cellular processes […]
The Emerging Players in the Epigenetics of HypoxiaOctober 14, 2009Even beyond its most obvious consequence – death — oxygen deprivation has profound effects on cells and tissues. A couple of recent papers highlight some connections between epigenetics and hypoxia. Anaerobic respiration is great for brewing beer. But add O2 and the yeasty beasties stop fermenting. It’s the same principle – only in reverse – […]
A Tangled Web We Weave When We Practice to RegulateSeptember 10, 2009We’ve all seen them hanging on the freezers and filling otherwise empty wall space in labs–signal transduction maps that look like abstract artwork. They’re enough to make even the most dedicated researcher wonder if there’s light at the end of the tunnel. As difficult as it is to make sense of complex transcriptional cascades, generating […]
miRNA Regulatory Documentary Bonus Footage: Featuring XRN-2September 10, 2009Most miRNA plots we follow share a similar climactic ending: miRNA inhibits this, in this condition, in response to this. Don’t get us wrong. We can read about miRNA regulation all day, which is good because we often do, but do you ever wonder what happens to miRNAs after they’ve locked their target, and put […]
Chromatin Structure: More Biasing Than A Political Talk ShowAugust 26, 2009If you watch television news these days, you can spot bias a mile away. Well, we can’t do much about shoddy journalism, but a new report from scientists at UC Berkeley, led by Michael Eisen, calls attention to some bias we can fix; the kind caused by the structure of chromatin in ChIP experiments. The […]
Bioinformatics Brawn Links Histone Mods To mRNA SplicingAugust 25, 2009With terabytes of data streaming off sequencers nowadays, there’s heaps of data available that is begging to be mined. You don’t always have to run your own wet lab experiments either, if you know where to look. We know most bosses or PIs out there will probably resist cutting you loose to Starbuck’s to “crunch […]
Rinse and Spit: The Future of Cancer TestingAugust 25, 2009Gather round the spittoon, partners, there’s a new Ome in town. The miRome has joined the proteome and transcriptome as the “third diagnostic alphabet in saliva,” extols UCLA dental prof David Wong. For the past seven years or so the NIH (in particular the National Institute of Dental and CranioFacial Research) has been pushing saliva […]