You Are What Your Father Ate, TooDecember 30, 2010Several recent studies have shown that Mom’s diet at conception or during pregnancy can affect the epigenetics of her offspring. Now it’s Dad’s turn to share some of the responsibility as well. A new Cell paper by Oliver Rando at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and colleagues found that male mice fed a low-protein […]
Combinatorial Histone Interactions Put Antibodies’ Specificity in a BindDecember 24, 2010Whether you work in Hollywood or the research labs close by at UCLA, it seems like a good set of Abs can solve most problems. Unfortunately there’s no airbrushing when it comes to ChIP. Most ChIP antibodies are pretty good at recognizing the specific histone modification they were raised against, as a couple of recent […]
Small Pores Provide Smoother 5-hmC ExperienceDecember 16, 2010Small pores aren’t just highly sought after in the cosmetics industry. They can really lend a hand in smoothing out the rougher epigenetics experimental challenges researchers face nowadays. Just ask Dr. Meni Wanunu and Marija Drndic at the University of Pennsylvania, along with colleagues from New England Biolabs, Boston University, and Temple University, who put […]
miR-200a Takes Down Cancerous Stem-like TransitionDecember 15, 2010There’s been a deafening buzz lately surrounding a new focus of epigeneticists known as the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). EMT, the gateway between normal epithelial cells and those that gain mesenchymal properties, is thought to be the point where cancer metastasis kicks off. And now a University of Hong Kong team, led by Hongping Xia reports […]
SILAC Offers a New Twist on Histone TurnoverDecember 15, 2010A new technique has arrived on the scene that makes life a little easier for those of you into studying histone turnover rates. Taking advantage of technologies used by our friends in proteomics, researchers at Princeton University explored the turnover of various histone proteins and how post-translational modifications (PTMs) alter the speed of that process. […]
