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Stress Accelerates Epigenetic Ageing

December 18, 2015

The epigenetic clock has developed faster than the iWatch: it can predict biological age from select CpGs, which when compared with chronological age, gives a metric known as Δ-age. The greater the difference, the greater the acceleration of epigenetic age, which indicates variation in the rate of senescence between people. To understand this variation and […]

A TAD Closer to Understanding 3D Chromatin Structure

December 15, 2015

Interview with Dr. Jennifer Phillips-Cremins at Keystone Symposia’s Precision Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology. My lab is really focused on understanding the epigenetic mechanisms that regulate early brain development. And the, sort of traditional way of studying epigenetic marks, is to zoom in and really focus on a particular modification at a precise location in […]

Directed Evolution in Synthetic Biology with Dr. Andrew Ellington

December 12, 2015

Interview with Dr. Andrew Ellington at Keystone Symposia’s Precision Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology: Designing Genomes and Pathways Parts, Circuits, and Systems So in directed evolution, what you’re generally trying to do is to optimize function. And that can mean a lot of different things. But if we keep within the synthetic biology paradigm, we […]

Automating Pluripotent Stem Cell Culture – The Rise of the Robots?

December 4, 2015

They help cook dinner, clean the dishes, and sweep up afterward. They also build our cars, help us explore space, and now they may be on the verge of aiding in highly complex tasks in the laboratory. In particular, robot-based automation is being explored as a means to enhance efficiency in laboratories studying pluripotent stem […]

Epigenetic Diversity Teams Up with Genetics to Explain Complex Phenotypes

December 4, 2015

If epigenetics has taught us anything, it’s that genes are not our destiny. Even though aberrant patterns of epigenetic marks have been caught at the scene of the crime in many disease states, we know relatively little about their natural variation and how this influences human health. That may be about to change however with […]

DNA Methylation and SNPs Interact to Shape Neurodevelopment and Schizophrenia Risk

December 4, 2015

While epigenetic marks drive traits on their own, their complex influence on phenotype can also be caught in an intimate tango with underlying sequence. One way to characterize this association is by studying DNA methylation quantitative trait loci (mQTLs), which are SNPs in the genome that influence DNA methylation. Previously, the Lab of Jonathan Mill […]

Enhancers Shape the Fetal Landscape of Dynamic Developmental DNA Methylation

November 29, 2015

Waddington’s epigenetic landscape is a classic metaphor for the role of epigenomics in development. In it, a cell becomes increasingly committed to a certain developmental trajectory as it acquires marks that poise it for later development. Massive efforts have been undertaken to chart this unexplored landscape and discover the buried treasures of development. Much has […]

CRISPR-Enhanced Enhancer Mapping

November 29, 2015

Enhancers are hugely important regulatory regions of DNA that control gene expression. New techniques are telling us a lot about enhancer structure and function, but the study of enhancers could still use some enhancement. Enhancers are currently defined by what they look like (local DNA methylation, histone modifications, and chromatin availability) or by pulling them […]

Bisulfite FREEway Provides Route to the Lost Oxidized Derivatives of DNA Methylation

November 16, 2015

When navigating complex environments, it’s always handy to have a good map. Although the human epigenome project has been pretty good at mapping the complexities of 5-methyl cytosine (5mC), and more recently 5-hydroxymethylation (5hmC), other oxidative derivatives of 5hmC, 5-formylcytosine (5fC) and 5-carboxylcytosine (5caC), have remained relatively uncharted terrain. Researchers from North Carolina and Active Motif […]

m6A Modification Protects Against Heat Shock

November 13, 2015

When exposed to high temperatures, cells behave much as we would on a hot summer’s day. Cell division, and most energy-consuming activities, come to a standstill (a bit like the human equivalent of lying perfectly still on a sunbed with a mojito in hand). Yet, despite the general repression of translation, genes encoding protective heat […]