SAXS Imaging Gets to the (Brave)heart of the Matter: First Full-Length Structure of a Long Non-Coding RNAFebruary 18, 2020It’s Valentine’s season, which means love is in the air, and heart-shaped novelties are abundant. But new research from the labs of Trushar Patel (University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada) and Karissa Sanbonmatsu (Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA) has flipped the script: they are giving us the shape of Braveheart, a long non-coding RNA […]
A Dynamic Epigenetic Editing Duo: Mutant DNMT3A and SunTag Team Up to Reduce Off-Target MethylationFebruary 4, 2020Some of the best superheroes are born out of a mutational event. It’s how Peter Parker became Spiderman, how Bruce Banner turned into the Incredible Hulk, and where the X-Men derive their powers. It just goes to show that mutations aren’t always a bad thing — a point exemplified by the new superhero team in […]
A Perfect Harmony: Orchestrating Joint Chromatin Conformation and Methylome Mapping in Single CellsOctober 7, 2019If a better understanding of gene regulation is music to your ears, then tune in for the latest developments in single-cell epigenomics. It is well established that both DNA methylation and higher-order chromatin structure play crucial roles in development, differentiation and disease, and there are readily available technologies for both (whole-genome bisulfite sequencing and chromatin […]
The Tn5 Transposase Takes Single-cell ChIP-Seq to the Next LevelSeptember 18, 2019It’s never good to see someone lagging behind the rest, but while stepwise developments to single-cell chromatin immunoprecipitation and subsequent parallel sequencing techniques (ChIP-seq) have led to gradually improved yields and increased sensitivity with reduced numbers of cells since the first report of a single-cell ChIP protocol, we still lack widely-applicable and low-cost methods to […]
LADL-ing Up a New Optoepigenetic Chromatin Looping TechniqueAugust 12, 2019For your daily serving of epigenetics brain food, look no further than the entwined spaghetti-like chromatin. Although it may look like a bowl full of chaos, there are distinct domains and long-range genomic interactions that function in a variety of regulatory roles. A team at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) led by Jennifer Phillips-Cremins and […]
ChIP 101: Beginner’s Guide to ChIP AssaysJuly 24, 2019Become a ChIP Assay Expert! The chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay is one of the best ways to study the association of DNA-binding proteins with chromatin and the localization of histone modifications throughout the genome. But ChIP assays take time to master. Our friends at Active Motif have put together this free ChIP 101 eBook that […]
New Sequencing Technique TAPS into Genome-Wide DNA Methylation Profiles Without the BSMarch 12, 2019While trying to uncover the mysteries of the DNA methylation, a lot of BS is often required. And no, we’re not talking about workplace politics but rather sodium bisulfite (BS) conversion. Thankfully, the labs of Chun-Xiao Song and Benjamin Schuster-Böckler at Oxford University (UK) have developed a new “BS-free” approach to uncover the secrets of the […]
Colorectal Cancer Cells Single in on an ‘Omics’ Bundle UpgradeJanuary 14, 2019It often seems the best deals come in bundles. Bundle your internet, phone service, and cable package and those long hours in the lab become a bit less tempting. But now there’s a new sequencing bundle that will make you never want to leave the lab. scTrio-seq2 is a single-cell multiomic bundling that meets your […]
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Tri-CNovember 13, 2018It’s easy to think that at this point, science has it all figured out. We’ve developed genome-wide techniques to look at chromosome structure in many different contexts: from mapping chromatin interactions (Hi-C), to observing DNA-RNA interactions (SPRITE), and even identifying higher-order DNA structures (GAM). Unfortunately, none of these techniques have the resolution to look at […]