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Chromatin Never Forgets to Stay in the Loop

September 3, 2014

While DNA has long been thought of as the molecular sheriff of inheritance, the epigenome continues to unravel it’s mystery in a western film style, with chromatin as the lasso wielding cowboy that never lets past transgressions slide. It seems that the pericentric heterochromatin (PCH) gang has gone and looted chromatin of it’s transcriptional treasures by some organized crime. […]

Tumors Go Minimalist with DNA Methylation Blocks

August 26, 2014

It seems that cancer is joining the minimalist trend, and has recently been caught sporting a universal and distinct DNA methylation signature. A talented team from John Hopkins lead by epi-gurus Andrew Feinberg and Rafael Irizarry show that large hypomethylated blocks are a defining feature in a number of different human solid tumors. These hypomethylated blocks also […]

3D Epigenome Folding Models

August 21, 2014

Much like 3D pictures enhance the illusion of depth of picture perception, polymer physics can enhance the depth of organization of epigenomic landscape in topologically associated 3D loop domains. Eukaryotic chromatin is organized into topologically associated epigenomic domains. A team of French researchers led by Daniel Jost recently unveiled a new approach for modeling epigenomic […]

Alzheimer Disease Gets Brain Region Specific EWAS

August 17, 2014

Epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) appear to be the natural evolution of GWAS that has given neuroscience a epigenomic renaissance. Jonathan Mill and team from the University of Exeter Medical School and King’s College London have shown that sometimes it’s best to cover all angles and in their latest report(s) offer up some new epigenetic targets for studying the neuroscience of Alzheimer […]

Online Stem Cell Diploma from University of Ulster 2014

August 13, 2014

The University of Ulster is offering an entirely online, postgraduate diploma course in Stem Cell Biology and it’s starting soon. The course is designed to allow students to break into, or advance in a career in the stem cell field. They’ve assembled a panel of international stem cell industry experts advising on the course content […]

Non-Watson-Crick Base Pairing in the miRNA Seed Region

August 12, 2014

First epigenetics knocked Mendel off the high horse of simple inheritance and now it’s taking a shot at Watson and Crick. It seems that not even base-pairing is safe these days, with microRNA targeting demonstrating that it is anything but simple. In its latest political statement this member of the non-coding party has been caught […]

CRISPR/Cas9 Get Upgraded sgRNA Targeting

August 12, 2014

The Crispr/Cas9 genome editing system has risen to fame so quickly it appears to be suffering from a case of the bends. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University however have just given it a bit more room by to breathe by overcoming an inherent bias that limits sequences the system can target. By modifying the short guide […]

Patient Specific iPSCs Team Up with CRISPR/Cas9

August 12, 2014

Some villains are so tough that it might take a few heroes to take them on. β-thalassemia is just that evil, an all too common genetic disease at the worldwide level. Caused by simple mutations in the hemoglobin beta (HBB) gene, this beast is Mendelian in nature. Which makes a perfect target for CRISPR/Cas9, a duo with […]

The Embryonic Journey of DNA Methylation Dynamics

August 5, 2014

Two recent Nature papers made big strides in understanding mammalian embryonic DNA methylation. The Meissner and Eggan team from Harvard focused in on CpG dynamics and how they compare to mice, specifically in terms of parental contribution. While the Qian and Tang team from Bejing examined how DNAm effects the epigenetic embryonic landscape in terms of histone […]

Gazing at Your Local Epiproteome with CRISPR-ChAP-MS

August 4, 2014

For those of you who were thinking the CRISPR/Cas9 system was just limited to genome editing, think again because the story just got a new twist. Almost like combining the bullet speed of Superman with the hi-tech gadgets of Batman, Alan Tackett and colleagues come up with a new tool to look at all the […]