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From Neuron to Germline: Inheritance by Mobile RNAs

February 4, 2015

We’ve got transgenerational epigenetic inheritance on the mind and now strangely enough it seems that the mind also causes transgenerational epigenetic inheritance?! Researchers have just shown the strangest case of inheritance yet: soma to germline. A talented team from the University of Maryland have been tracing double stranded RNA (dsRNA) in C. elegans and have made some interesting observations […]

Neurodevelopment and Methylomic Trajectories: Sex and Disease

February 4, 2015

If variety is the spice to life than the brain must be the spiciest organ of them all, with DNA methylation as its rooster sauce (which comes with its own embedded sodium bisuflite conversion kit). By studying the delicious layers of DNA methylation variation we’ve seen strange parental expression biases, methylation differences between discordant twins, and how the dynamics […]

Cellular Transdifferentiation: Meet the 21st Century Alchemists

February 3, 2015

For centuries, some of the world’s leading scholars worked endlessly with one objective, to turn ordinary metals into gold. Now, scientists of the 21st century are trying their hand at another type of alchemy, turning one cell type into another. This process, known as ‘transdifferentiation’ or ‘direct reprogramming’ can create a potentially limitless source of […]

Reprogramming Lottery is Epigenetically Rigged

February 3, 2015

If epigenetics has taught us anything, it is that not all genetically identical beings are created equal. A team of stem-cell researchers from Tel Aviv University led by Iftach Nachman now apply this principle to populations of cells undergoing reprogramming to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and show that some cells have a higher chance of […]

Reinventing Reprogramming: Bringing Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Technology to the Masses?

February 3, 2015

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster”. They did it for Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man, and now researchers from the laboratory of Joseph C. Wu (Stanford) have applied the same thinking to the technology behind human induced pluripotent stem […]

Potential Stem Cell Treatment for Human Hair Loss

February 3, 2015

Throw away those tonics! Bin those balms! Hide those hairpieces! We bring great news for those who are losing more than the average of 100 hairs per day. In a set of hair-raising experiments researchers from the laboratory of Alexey V. Terskikh (Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, USA) have developed a novel strategy for the production […]

Scientists Teach Bacteria a New Genetic Language to Prevent Escapes

February 2, 2015

Although synthetic biology holds the potential to revolutionize everything from healthcare to sustainable manufacturing, it has also spawned fears of engineered organisms escaping the lab and wreaking havoc. Ever since Viktor Frankenstein first plugged life into his unwitting subject, something about manipulating life has held a special place in humanity’s collective nightmares. Early geneticists, recognizing […]

A SIRT-an Link Between Metabolism, Stem Cell Function and Epigenetics

January 27, 2015

In our younger years our rampant metabolism meant we could eat what we wanted with little or no consequences. However, as we get older, our metabolism somehow gets “reprogrammed”, meaning all that yummy bad stuff does nothing for our energy levels or our waistlines! But why do we face this fate? A delectable new study […]

Bacterial Kryptonite Uncovered in the Biological Dark Matter Mines

January 27, 2015

Public health has a looming, if slow-simmering, crisis. Antibiotics, which revolutionized health care in the 20th century, are losing their punch. Evolution, it turns out, is pretty effective at producing things that don’t die. Accordingly, bacteria are evolving resistance to our antibiotic arsenal, and more people are suffering from previously-treatable infections. Meanwhile, the pipeline of […]

A Good Friend is Forever: DNMTs and Histone Complexes

January 26, 2015

It’s not always easy to find good friends, but recent work has found that the de novo DNA methyltransferases DNMT3A2 and DNMT3B1 are far from socially awkward. Baubec et al. from the Swiss team lead by Dirk Schübeler uncovered some companions of these DNMTs by profiling their binding in embryonic stem cells (ESCs) through streptavidin […]