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From Brains to Bone – How Oncohistones Cause Tumorigenesis

June 7, 2016

A flurry of studies over recent years has revealed a significant link between mutations in histone H3 genes and tumorigenesis, although how such H3 mutations (or “oncohistones”) mediate tumorigenesis had only been assessed in certain brain tumors. However, two new studies in Science have now revealed how oncohistones can promote tumorigenesis in mesenchymal tissues, which […]

Designer dCas9 Systems Compete for CRISPR’s Top Activator

May 28, 2016

Deactivated Cas9 (dCas9) has quickly risen to the spotlight to show that transcriptional regulation is just as fashionable as the ever so popular genome editing. Now, a number of designer systems face-off in a competition to find out who is best at turning on a genome. dCas9 provides the perfect combination of scaffold and targeting […]

Self-Organizing Human Embryos Tell All from the Petri Dish

May 26, 2016

Humanity’s ongoing quest for knowledge has revealed unseen realms and unimaginable places, but there are still a few things that we know little about – the inner workings of a black hole, the composition of McDonald’s special sauce, and what goes on in the early post-implantation human embryo. There are good reasons for that latter […]

Game Of Genomes: Argonaute Threatens Reign Of CRISPR

May 20, 2016

On the island of genome editing, CRISPR is king. Rapidly rising from obscurity, the CRISPR nuclease Cas9 handily dispatched its predecessors, the clumsy TALENs and zinc-finger nucleases. Since then, there has been some strife within the royal family, as better Cas9 proteins and its relatives fought for dominance. Despite this internal turmoil, the CRISPR dynasty […]

Improving Regenerative Therapies with Naked Mole Rat iPSCs

May 20, 2016

At first glance the naked mole rat (NMR), or Heterocephalus glaber to his Latin speaking friends, might not win you over with its looks, but it truly is an amazing animal. It’s obviously comfortable in its own skin, but it also thrives in harsh environments, lacks pain sensitivity in its skin, has low metabolic and […]

Age, Sequence, and DNA Methylation are Culprits of Lactose Intolerance

May 20, 2016

While fine wine and aged cheese are culinary delights, some of us who dine on dairy often start to go a bit ‘sour’ with age and develop lactose intolerance. Thankfully, to aid our mental digestion of such a foul fate, a collaborative effort between Toronto and Lithuania has shown the molecular mechanism of why we can […]

On Demand Demethylation with dCas9-TET1

May 16, 2016

Every researcher loves a good tool, and lately, it seems that CRISPR might be an even more modular tool than PCR. Attesting to the modularity of CRISPR/Cas9 is catalytically deactivated Cas9 (dCas9). dCas9 has the precision of Cas9, when combined with sgRNA, and can be fused to a modular effector domain that allows for extra […]

Small Molecule Cocktails are a Big Hit at the Cellular Reprogramming Party

May 6, 2016

Cellular reprogramming represents the biological equivalent of spinning gold from straw: the generation of one therapeutically-desired cell type from another more abundant, and less useful, starting cell type. Following reprogramming, we can incorporate the resultant cells into new and effective patient-specific regenerative strategies. Reprogramming of somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) generates a […]

Trifecta of Epigenetic Methylation Reveals a Long-Term Profile of Fetal Alcohol Exposure

May 6, 2016

During this time of the year, it’s easy to get caught up in landscaping. Regardless of whether your landscaping is of the epigenetic or garden variety, it seems that either way we can all benefit from the wisdom of the old saying, “can’t see the forest for the trees”. Sometimes we just get so caught […]

Liquid Biopsies Reveal More than Sequence: The Epigenomics of Circulating Cell-Free DNA

May 6, 2016

Every good captain knows that when your ship is in distress, you send out an SOS. Now, two new papers now leave us wondering if that tactic is borrowed from diseased tissues. Many diseases are characterized by cell death that releases circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) into the blood stream, which can now be analyzed in […]