Free Protocol Guides: RIP and iCLIPMay 23, 2013So you’ve been following RIP and CLIP over the last couple of years and you’ve seen what researchers can do with these methods. Now it’s time to roll up the sleeves and put the pipette in action. The kinds folks over at Abcam have some nice protocol guides to help you get fastracked to RIP […]
Life Long Changes in DNA Methylation & ncRNAs in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)May 22, 2013Spring is in the air and with all the great weather who could say no to a nice refreshing beer or upside down margarita shot? Well, if you’re an expecting mother you may just want to hold off. Recent research from Dr. Shiva Singh’s laboratory at Western University (Oh Canada!) has shown that not only […]
Epigenetics in Stem Cells TimelineMay 7, 2013Epigenetics and stem cells go hand in pipette. These two research areas have seen explosive growth so we thought we’d highlight some of our favorite highlights.
The Future of lncRNAs with Dr. John RinnMay 2, 2013Dr. John L. Rinn from Harvard University and the Broad Institute (Harvard and MIT) is a prominent researcher in long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and agreed to sit down and discuss his perspective on the intersection of lncRNA and epigenetics. EpiGenie: You’ve mentioned that you feel knockout models are going to play a key role in the […]
microRNAs Up Their Game: They Regulate Other microRNAs in the HeartApril 30, 2013Just when you think you’ve got a handle on microRNAs, they go and up their game—regulating other microRNAs to produce large effects. To be accurate, they’ve been doing this all along, but now a talented research crew at Wash U School of Medicine of medicine is on to their game and has shared their findings […]
Dynamic RNA Methylation Emerges as New Player in the Epigenetic LandscapeApril 29, 2013Methylation is a hot topic in the field of epigenetics whether it’s occurring on the cytosines of DNA or its histone protein friends. With a relatively well-known set of enzymes, methylation marks are dynamically modified in order to regulate gene expression. However, the revisiting of a RNA modification discovered in the 70’s has come to […]
RNA Methylation in lncRNAs Does XISTApril 24, 2013Building on work from the 1970s, the era of orange shag carpet and bell bottoms, researchers report that poly(A) RNA gets methylated on cytosines, just like other RNAs and DNA. These methylated cytosines—in the long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) HOTAIR and XIST—could also be important for their functions. Methylated cytosines in DNA are old news, and […]
Engineering (Epi)Genomes with CRISPR-CasMarch 14, 2013To really figure out what genes really do, you gotta get in there and get your hands dirty. That usually means deleting or modifying genes, or other regulatory regions. In a recent “Research Highlight” article, researchers at Johns Hopkins reviewed the three main ways to do this, including the increasingly popular CRISPR/Cas system. To engineer […]
EpiGenie Book Reviews: EpigeneticsMarch 11, 2013If you’ve spent any time browsing the EpiGenie site, then you already know that we find epigenetics pretty interesting. So, of course any book with the title of Epigenetics is going to grab our attention. Epigenetics edited by Jörg Tost, gathers information from several top scientists working in various facets of epigenetics to assemble a […]
lncRNA Regulates Tumor Suppressor Two WaysMarch 4, 2013A little redundancy can be a good thing. A team of researchers led by Dr. Kevin Morris at the Scripps Institute, in La Jolla, recently showed that a little redundancy in the regulation of PTEN, a tumor suppressor gene, can be pretty useful…but also really complicated. PTENpg1, a PTEN pseudogene, regulates PTEN via both sense […]
