We doubt that Shakespeare was thinking of DNA methylation and stem cell differentiation when he penned that famous line, and yet somehow it seems to apply here. Recent work led by Frank Rosenbauer at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin has revealed some of the first insights into the causal relationships between […]
- Developmental Biology
True Biomarker: DNA Methylation Steps up in Non-Invasive Prenatal Dx
With the raging success of Twilight and True Blood, the masses of entertainment junkies out there have joined a well-established movement in the scientific community to make the most out of blood. There are a ton of potentially useful biomarkers floating around in our veins and the non-invasive sampling process has made blood a crowd […]
How You Are Conceived Makes a Difference in Your Epigenetics
Ahem! What we mean is that being conceived in a dish versus the natural way can affect the methylation of your DNA. Previous studies suggested that the less romantic method of putting sperm and egg together in vitro (assisted reproduction technology; ART) resulted in a higher risk of birth defects and rare disorders that involve […]
Differentiation Got Your Chromatin in a Bind?
Euchromatin could be what gives stem cells their stemness. A screen for factors that both reduce embryonic stem (ES) cells’ ability to expand and diminish their expression of stem cell marker Oct4 yielded just one that hadn’t been seen before: the chromatin-remodeling enzyme Chd1. Chd1 recognizes di-or tri-methylated histone 3 at lysine 4 (H3K4me2/3) – […]
DZNep Hints At New Wave Of Epigenetic Cancer Therapies
Although it may sound like the name of a DJ in a Vegas nightclub, DZNep is actually a histone methylation inhibitor, and has recently created some buzz when it was found to inhibit H3K27 and H4K20 methylation and reactivate silenced genes in cancer cells. Sensing the therapeutic possibilities, Peter Jones and his team at USC […]