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Coffee Gets Your Baby’s Heart Going…the Wrong Way

November 13, 2014

There’s no denying the power of coffee, it seems that without it humanity wouldn’t have the concentration or energy needed to tackle the complexities of the epigenome. But as researchers from the University of Florida show, with consumption comes responsibility and a molecule powerful enough to help you complete the 180 from bed to breakfast, may […]

A New Methylation Signature: CpG Ravines as a CpG Island Sub-Type

November 13, 2014

Islands and shores are always on the mind at this time of the year, but just because winter is coming doesn’t mean we need to put the rest of the CpGenome on the shelf. CpG Shores might be the regulatory master of CpG Islands but new features keep emerging, like CpG Canyons, and now a new sub-type of CpG Islands is coming […]

In the Epitranscriptome Clusters of Co-Methylation Define m6A’s Function

November 13, 2014

Lately, at the EpiGenie HQ, we’ve had our mind on methylation and our money on RNA. Not just limited to DNA or Cytosine, we’ve seen that N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is a highly dynamic mark in RNA that has a critical role in stem cell differentiation. Now researchers from the Northwestern Polytechnical University in China have set out to find how m6A dynamics work on […]

A Little Negativity Can Go a Long Way with Protein-Based Genome Editing

November 12, 2014

In today’s culture negativity is usually frowned upon; maintaining a positive outlook is almost essential to a successful scientific career, but an innovative team of researchers have put some negativity to good use in improving transfection of genome editing complexes using negatively charged proteins and nucleic acid transfection reagents. Conventional protein-based therapeutics usually focus on […]

Breaking Barriers: Cloning Made Easier by Erasing Epigenetic Marks

November 5, 2014

If Star Wars is anything to go by, cloning techniques of the future will be able to create a whole army of clones in the blink of an eye. Yet, back on planet Earth, the cloning of today is still relatively inefficient. A new study published in Cell identifies an important epigenetic road block in […]

Polymerases are Key Influencers in Homologous Recombination Events

November 5, 2014

Gene targeting by homologous recombination can be variable and researchers are itching to understand what key factors underlie variable success in editing experiments. Could it be an unfavorable chromatin environment, repetitive sequences, or maybe just bad luck? An unrelenting group of researchers at the University of Washington recently set out to shed some light on the genomic elements […]

in vivo CRISPR Takes Aim at Key DNA Methylation Players in the Brain

October 31, 2014

Adding to the ever growing potential of genome editing, one of the latest breakthroughs from the lab of Feng Zhang at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard puts CRISPR/Cas9 to the test with an interesting research trifecta of: in vivo genome editing focused on the brain genome editing that targeted DNA methylation machinery including key readers and writers. both […]

A CRISPR Way to Create Fusions

October 31, 2014

As CRISPR continues to evolve into the laboratory version of a Swiss Army Knife, it’s not surprising that another innovative research team have used the approach in a slick way; in this case to engineer of oncogenic chromosomal rearrangements. Chromosomal rearrangements, gene fusions, deletions and inversions are classical hallmarks of cancer. These re-arrangements lead to […]

‘Naïve’ Human Embryonic Stem Cells Found in Culture

October 31, 2014

Cultured human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) already have some idea of what they want to be when they grow up whereas cultured mouse ESCs are completely undecided about their future careers. A study published in Nature challenges this distinction and shows that some hESCs in culture still haven’t quite made up their minds. Mouse ESCs […]

Optimized Stem Cell Differentiation Protocol Aims to Mend Broken Hearts

October 30, 2014

Broken hearts aren’t just for country songs. Millions of people die each year from cardiovascular disease and related complications. Damage to the muscles of the heart during events such as heart attacks is mostly irreversible and severely affects length and quality of life for those who survive. Creating replacement muscle cells – or cardiomyocytes – […]