Placental miRNAs Predict Infant BehaviorJuly 18, 2013Many parents consider their children’s behavior to be a bit of a mystery, (just ask anyone who has shared a plane ride with an unruly toddler) but new miRNA research hints that it may soon be possible to predict your child’s behavioral traits by a simple non-invasive test right after birth. A fortune telling team […]
Disrupting DMNT1’s Cancerous InteractionsJuly 9, 2013It seems like almost every gene examined today has it roots in cancer, and epigenetic mechanisms haven’t missed the invite to that party. But with all these players comes an overwhelming heterogeneity that has troubled researchers looking for a cure ever since cancer was described as an epigenetic disease. Some research groups have tried out […]
Turn by Turn Navigation of DNA Methylation Maps in the Human Brain Now AvailableJuly 9, 2013Whoever claims cartography is a lost art hasn’t visited the Salk Institute lately. The cliffside research palace in La Jolla is home to a number of ambitious researchers who’ve been busy the last few years mapping every nook and cranny of the epigenome. Most recently, a team of clever researchers led the charge on mapping “genome-wide composition, […]
It’s a Histone-Regulate-Histone World Out ThereJuly 9, 2013The central dogma has taken quite a beating thanks to epigenetics rule-bending ways. With all the cross talk and looping going on it’s hard to tell who’s the boss these days. In their recent review, Mahajan and Mahajan from the Moffit Cancer Centre in Florida discuss the implications of their latest finding (Nature Structural & […]
The Epigenetics of Stressed-Out PlantsJuly 2, 2013Stress is something that we’re all familiar with. A number of landmark studies on the effects of stress have been done in mammals. But it turns out that our cousins-from-another-ancestor don’t have dream lives either. Life is tough out there for a plant; you’re limited to one location where the conditions can change drastically over […]
The Darkside of Epigenetic PlasticityJune 26, 2013Sure, genes get mutated in cancers, but the epigenome gets messed-up too. In fact, two researchers argue in a recent review that a “dysregulated epigenome” that’s too plastic and flexible could itself lead to cancer. Andrew Feinberg and Winston Timp, both from the Center for Epigenetics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, wrote the […]
Webinar: Lighting up the Dark Matter of the Genome – Unravelling the Roles of Non-Coding DNA in Disease and DevelopmentJune 26, 2013Dr. Marcel Dinger, PhD discusses some of the most recent findings that shed light on non-coding RNAs in the genome. **this webinar is no longer available** Abstract Approximately 98% of the human genome comprises noncoding DNA, the function of which is largely unknown. Intriguingly, more than 85% of single nucleotide polymorphisms identified to be associated […]
Keeping Up with Live Cell DNA LoopingJune 25, 2013The reality TV era has made voyeurs of us all. So it makes sense that we’d want to take a peek inside live cells too. Now comes a report of a new method that shows, for the first time, DNA getting loopy inside live E. coli cells. Johns Hopkins University Med School researchers say that […]
DeepSAGE Digs up Expression Differences in 3’ EndsJune 24, 2013It isn’t always a good thing to get the end of something, but researchers say that by grabbing onto 3’ ends of transcripts and tagging them, DeepSAGE digs deep, getting low-level transcripts and getting new info on their “back-ends.” That could be important for figuring out exactly how gene expression changes with disease. “It was […]
RIP-Seq Shows miRNA Expression and Function Not Always a MatchJune 20, 2013There is a saying that, “each microRNA can have hundreds of target mRNAs, and each mRNA can be targeted by hundreds of miRNAs”. If that’s true, then how the heck are we supposed to know what’s going on in that crazy transcriptome? What does it mean when a miRNA and predicted target don’t explain the […]