Isolating Gene Circuits In Synthetic VesiclesDecember 8, 2016It’s that time of year again: time to attempt the sisyphean task of maintaining peace between relatives who are constitutionally incompatible. Suppose you want both the uncanny gifting skills of Aunt Mildred and the mouth-watering cooking prowess of Uncle Frank. But if you allow them in the same room at the same time, both the […]
Microbes and their Metabolites Serve Tasty Tissue Histone ModificationsDecember 5, 2016The old adage reads “you are what you eat”, but a tasty new study turned that bland old phrase into “your histones are what you eat!”, and what’s more, those behind the study have worked the mechanistic link. Some of our daily diet (i.e. coffee and candy) acts as an energy and carbon source for […]
ATAC-see Assaults Chromatin from Two Fronts: Visualization and SequencingNovember 24, 2016After playing hide-and-seq with chromatin for a while, we’re sure you’ve been begging for a new plan of attack to help you see what’s going on. Thankfully, a Northern California collaboration led by the lab of Howard Chang alongside the labs of William Greenleaf, Jan Liphardt, and Jennifer Doudna has brought forth a tactic to […]
Dnmt3C: A New Piece of DNA Methylation MachineryNovember 24, 2016A dog walk in the countryside led to Velcro, the search for chest pain therapies gave us (who me?) Viagra, and a messy microbiology lab bench provided penicillin. Some big research discoveries appear to have arrived in an “accidental” form and maybe, just maybe, new research from the laboratory of Déborah Bourc’his can be spoken […]
SALL4A Sets the Mood for a DNA Demethylation TET-á-TETNovember 16, 2016A romantic “tête-à-tête” between two lovebirds usually involves helping factors which set the mood and make the night move along slickly. A good wine, some soft lighting, and maybe even a little smooth jazz! While that might work for the humble researcher, the “TET-á-TET” involved in DNA demethylation is a slightly different affair and demands […]
PNA Nanoparticles Offer Gene Editing Alternative, Reveal SCF As Editing EnhancerNovember 16, 2016CRISPR/Cas9 may be the flashiest gene editing tool out there right now, but there are certainly other contenders for that throne. We previously profiled Argonautes as one alternative; another is peptide nucleic acids, or PNAs. Like DNA, PNAs are strings of standard nucleotide bases, but instead of a charged phosphate backbone, they are held together […]
Cpf1 And C2c2 Are Multitasking CRISPR Swiss Army KnivesNovember 16, 2016If there’s an official analogy for Cas9, it’s a pair of molecular scissors. Give Cas9 an RNA guide, and it will hunt down the complementary DNA and slice it in two with surgical precision. However, in this, the age of multitasking (HEY! Put down that other screen and pay attention!), being a one-trick pony doesn’t […]
The Delicate Balance Between H3K27me2 and H3K27me3 Decides Stem Cell FateNovember 15, 2016The polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) methylates lysine 27 of histone H3 (H3K27me) via its catalytic subunit Ezh2. While H3K27me3 and H3K27me1 have been associated with gene repression and activation respectively, the exact role of H3K27me2 remains under-explored. However, recent works in temperature-sensitive drosophila and in PRC2 knock out embryonic stem cells (ESCs) suggest a role […]
Hi-C Captures Chromosome Contacts Critical to Cognition, CRISPR/Cas9 ConfirmsNovember 15, 2016In today’s world there’s not much you can be sure of, particularly when it comes to understanding the complexities of human cognition. Thankfully, the epigenome offers some much needed explanation, as demonstrated by the insight gained from DNA methylation maps of human neurodevelopment. However, genetic interactions created by 3-D chromosome structure have remained more of […]
Orthogonal, Inducible dCas9s Combinatorially Regulate Gene ExpressionNovember 15, 2016Turning gene expression up and down is a powerful use of CRISPR/Cas9. Labs around the world have been hard at work figuring out how to use CRISPR to control gene expression – including both transcriptional activation and repression, and then extending it to control translation and the epigenome. Cas9 can be light-activated, and with some […]