Headlines Archives - EpiGenie | Epigenetics, Stem Cell, and Synthetic Biology News

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Ever get that feeling that you forgot something? Well maybe you did, but it doesn't have to be recent epigenetics research if you scope out our Headlines each week.

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Prenatal Exposure to Smoking is Associated with a Long-Term Mark on CpG Methylation

April 6, 2016

Pregnancy is a sensitive period for a developing embryo/fetus where cues from the environment are incorporated into the epigenome where they can have long-term implications. While certain prenatal exposures, like alcohol and smoking, are well known to produce a number of negative health outcomes, they remain the largest cause of preventable birth defects and are […]

Zika Virus Infection of Neural Progenitors Linked to Brain Abnormalities

April 1, 2016

The sight of newborn infants with radically reduced brain sizes (microcephaly) has seized attention worldwide and thrust the Zika virus into the limelight as the probable culprit. Zika spreads through mosquito bites and belongs to the Flaviviridae virus family, but how does Zika infection cause such devastating abnormalities in developing infants? A multidisciplinary team led […]

Human Haploid ESCs – Half the DNA but Double the Potential?

April 1, 2016

Eyes, feet, hands, and chromosomes – two of each seems to be the done thing. Indeed, two sets of each chromosome (diploidy) is a general feature in mammals, except when we produce eggs and sperm (meiosis) which contain only one set of chromosomes (haploidy). However, various studies have described the production of embryonic stem cells […]

Location, Location, Location! Better Fluorescent Labeling For Protein And RNA Localization

April 1, 2016

Location is important. But while we have great GPS tools to locate ourselves in the macro-world, microscopic things can be a bit harder to find. You might think it would be tough to lose something in as tiny a space as the inside of a cell, but that’s what I thought about my keys in […]

eBook: ChIP Reloaded | Recent Advances & Technical Guidance

March 25, 2016

In this eBook, we’ve summarized several recent technical advances in ChIP that simplify the process and improve performance. Then we tossed in invaluable technical guidance from ChIP experts tackling every thing from working with challenging samples to data normalization. To top it all off, we’ve highlighted some new web applications that aim to streamline ChIP data analysis […]

CRISPR Trifecta Pays Off Big

March 21, 2016

If basic research drives innovation, the CRISPR-Cas system is one trophy-laden driver. Not long after its unexpected discovery as an obscure prokaryotic defense system against viruses, it has become the hottest thing since recombinant DNA. However, CRISPR’s intricate details still remain somewhat mysterious. Not to fear: basic research into CRISPR rolls on, with new, intriguing, […]

eBook: DNA Demethylation in Development

March 19, 2016

This ebook provides an introduction to the key cytosine base modifications: 5-methylcytosine, 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), 5-formylcytosine (5fC), and 5-carboxylcytosine (5caC) that have been at the center of intense study in recent years. Inside, we’ve compiled numerous highlights that provide background on how these modifications function in DNA demethylation and also highlight the growing data that captures the role of demethylation […]

Manipulating DNA Methylation with dCas9-DNMT3A

March 19, 2016

Almost immediately after its inception as a biotechnological tool, CRIPSR/Cas9 showed that it was more than just a genome editor. Deactivated Cas9 (dCas9) is a precision RNA-guided DNA-binding domain with a growing range of effector domains that can be swapped out like LEGO. When it comes to epigenome editing with dCas9, histones have led the […]

Magnetogenetics Goes Deep Into the Brain

March 19, 2016

The ability to control things with magnetic fields is no longer restricted to the mischief of comic book villains. Using synthetic biology to figure out just what neurons do has always been a tricky task, because it has been limited by requiring invasive surgery (optogenetics) or slow on-off kinetics (drugs). But now magnetogenetics emerges as […]

Peeping in on Dynamic All-or-None Single-Cell Chromatin Repression

March 6, 2016

Ever dream of knowing the single-cell details of chromatin regulators in real-time only to awake trapped in the static world of heterogenous cell populations? Well, dream no longer because thanks to the efforts of the Elowitz laboratory at Caltech researchers now have the ability to see just how some of our favorite epigenetic repressors (HDAC4, KRAB, DNMT3B […]