Today’s Popular Posts
- .
Popular Posts
- ,
Tag Archives: epigenetics
Epigenetics ‘leaks’ into trans-generational inheritance
One of the bigger and most important ‘debates’ in biology – both now and in the past – is whether adaptations made for the environment of a single individual can be inherited by its offspring. This is not about genetic inheritance, mutation, and the reproduction of the genes in DNA. This is about epigenetics, the [...]
Posted in News: Epigenetics Also tagged chromatin dynamics, demethylation, DNA, genetics, histones, inheritance, methylation, PGC, primordial germ cell, trans-generation Comments closed
New sequencing technique opens doors for epigenetics
What’s the difference between 5mC and 5hmC? Yes, the “h” but it is much more than that. Both are in biochemistry shorthand, which unless you’re a geneticist or biochemist you’ve probably never heard of and are not likely to remember. So let’s cut to the chase, oversimplified though it may be: As you almost certainly [...]
Posted in News: Epigenetics Also tagged Balasubramanian, Booth, DNA, epigenome, genome, methylation 1 Comment
Epigenetics in the brain: Evidence of methylation beyond cell division
Methylation is not a gasoline additive process or nor does it have anything to do with amphetamines. I mention this because methylation is proving to be significant. It is something that happens to your DNA and despite not being very well known by the public, research is showing it to be far more important than [...]
Posted in Impact: Epigenetics Also tagged DNA, epigenetic regulation, methylation, neuron, neuroscience, Song Leave a comment
Synthetic biology: Making new proteins with E. coli by adding DNA
Sometimes big advances in science happen without much public notice. That’s often because at the time they didn’t look like big advances in science, or just as likely, they were considered marginally workable, so nobody wanted to highlight them. Here’s one such case to consider: Researchers at Yale University (Connecticut, USA) and publishing in the [...]
Posted in Impact: Synthetic Biology Also tagged biochemistry, DNA, E. coli, phosphorylation, phosphoserine, protein, synthetic biology, Söll 1 Comment
Epigenetics and methylation: New DNA bases linked to protein
Adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine: These are the nucleobases, or just plain bases of DNA that in pairs called nucleotides carry the genetic code of life. There are four of them, right? At least that’s what most everybody learns. Of course, there is another base, uracil, which is found in RNA where it replaces thymine. [...]
Posted in News: Epigenetics Also tagged cytosine, DNA, methylation, new bases, nucleotide, RNA, Tet, Zhang Leave a comment
Part of what makes us human may be what’s missing
Here’s one of those scientific questions that contains a highly suggestive fact: Why is it that the tiny water flea (Daphnia pulex) has a record 31,000 genes and the human – the infinitely more complex human – has only 23,000 genes? Here’s another similar question: How is it that the human species is so different [...]
Posted in Impact: Epigenetics Also tagged biogenetics, Daphnia, DNA, evolution, gene, genetics, genome, junk DNA, Kingsley, missing DNA, penis spines Leave a comment
Reprogramming cells: The post stem cell future?
Sixth in a series of posts inspired by ten topics in ‘Insights of the Decade’ from the December 17, 2010 special issue of Science Magazine The topics are: Inflammation, climatology, tricks of light, alien planets, the microbiome, cell reprogramming, Martian water, the DNA time machine, cosmology and epigenetics. The original articles are now behind a [...]
Posted in Impact: Stem Cells Also tagged cell biology, cell reprogramming, DNA, embryonic stem cells, genetic modification, genetics, Gurdon, iPSC, pluripotent, proteomics, stem cells, Yamanaka Leave a comment
Hoogsteen base pairs: An alternate structure in DNA
Reverse Hoogsteen base pairing…..Wikipedia Commons I know some of my biases. One of them is knee-jerk skepticism about taking little-tested scientific results and blowing them up to “…a cure for cancer” or “…revolutionize the electronics industry.” However, like most people I also have a bias to be curious about interesting, if somewhat unusual scientific findings. [...]
Posted in Impact: DNA Decoding Also tagged base pairs, biochemistry, DNA, double-helix, genetic coding, genetics, histones, Hoogsteen, NMR, proteins, RNA 3 Comments
New finding: Noncoding RNA is the agent of gene silencing
This is news about research by Ingrid Grummt and colleagues at the German Cancer Research Center (Heidelberg, Germany) and their progress in discovering how instructions coded in DNA are correctly sequenced (silenced or activated). But first, an analogy: Way way back in the cave-person era of computing (say 1954), a ‘programmer’ would stand at a [...]
Posted in News: Cell Biology Also tagged DNA, gene, gene regulation, methylation, methyltransferase, mRNA, ncRNA, non-coding RNA, pRNA, RNA Leave a comment
Histones: DNA packaging and much more
DNA winds around histones….Credit: Max Planck Society Most everybody knows that DNA is the carrier of the genetic code, the instructions for how life reproduces, grows, and maintains. Cell biologists have long known that DNA comes with a very complex packaging material, proteins called histones, which help the 2 meter (6 foot) strand of DNA [...]
Posted in Impact: DNA Decoding Also tagged biochemistry, cell biology, DNA, fruit fly, gene, gene expression, histones, nucleus 1 Comment
microRNA: A cellular communicator
Discovered only about fifteen years ago, research on the non-coding variant of RNA called microRNA (or miRNA) continues to expand its role. New work by Chen-Yu Zhang and colleagues at five Chinese institutions has identified miRNA as an important cell-to-cell and cell-to-organ communication mechanism, one that is more versatile than the traditional notion of cellular [...]
Posted in News: DNA Decoding Also tagged atherosclerosis, cell communication, DNA, microRNA, miR-150, miRNA, RNA Leave a comment
New for epigenetics: Active pseudogenes and RNA as gene regulator
How is it that the human genome, with about 23,000 protein coding genes, can produce such a complicated organism as the human being, when the laboratory flatworm (C. elegans, a relatively simple organism) has about 20,000 coding genes? It seems fairly obvious that there must be something else at work in more complex organisms that [...]
Posted in Impact: Cell Biology Also tagged cancer, cell biology, ceRNA, DNA, genome, microRNA, molecular biology, mRNA, proteins, pseudogene, PTEN, PTENP1, RNA Leave a comment
Small steps toward understanding the epigenome
“You can think of it this way,” said Ren. “Neurons and skin cells share the identical set of genetic material – DNA – yet their structure and function are very different. The difference can be attributed to differences in their epigenome. This is analogous to computer hardware and software. You can load the same computer [...]
Posted in Impact: Cell Biology Also tagged adult cells, cell biology, chromatin, DNA, epigenome, fibroblasts, genetics, histones, mitochondria, nESC, nucleus, organic chemistry, RNA, stem cells 1 Comment
Fascinating: Many of us have genes from Neanderthals
One way or another many human beings carry a percentage of their DNA inherited from Neanderthal man. This has been suspected for some time (not only in comedy routines); now there is genetic data to back it up. An international team of scientists coordinated at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) and [...]
Posted in Impact: DNA Decoding Also tagged DNA, gene expression, genes, genome, genome sequencing, Homo neanderthalensis, homo sapiens, modern man, Neandertal, Neanderthal Comments closed
Epigenetics and introns: Life beyond DNA
The discovery and gradual elucidation of DNA and the genetic code over the last half century was certainly one of the most important achievements in science during that time – or arguably, any time. DNA and genetics also, rightfully, have dominated much of the thinking and interest in the biological sciences. So, without taking away [...]
Enhancer RNA (eRNA): More powerful than previously thought
As should be said repeatedly, we don’t know how the brain works. Not yet. Neuroscience is just starting on the vastly complex study of the brain at the molecular level, perhaps the lowest common denominator and the most important. A new study, published April 15 in Nature, by a team of researchers from Harvard Medical [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged ChIP-seq, DNA, eRNA, junk DNA, neurons, neuroscience, RNA, RNA-seq Leave a comment
Evolution treats transcription factors differently than DNA
People with reddish hair have genes for that, but what gets the job done – that is, growing reddish hair – isn’t the DNA or gene, it’s the transcription of the genes by molecules of protein, mainly RNA polymerase transcribing into messenger RNA (mRNA), which takes the designs coded in DNA and guides the production [...]
Posted in News: Proteomics Also tagged DNA, evolution, genes, genetics, molecular biology, protein, proteomics, speciation, species, transcription, tRNA Leave a comment
Can culture change the genome?
Almost from the beginning of our knowledge of genetics, it’s been asked, “Can the way we (humans) live change our genetics?” These days this is much the same as asking if culture can change the genome. It’s actually a relatively old question. The question got its biggest boost from one who is now a boogeyman [...]
Plants, animals, and proteins between them
Horizontal movement of DNA (genes passing between species) is well-known and the basis of major research (and disagreement). Less known and much less researched is a similar sharing of proteins between species. Virtually unknown and probably under-researched is protein shared between plants and animals. New work by Wendy Peer at Purdue University (Indiana, USA) could [...]
Posted in News: Proteomics Also tagged DNA, genes, genetics, plants, protein, proteomics Leave a comment
Heart disease linked to epigenetics
We’ve known for some time that if you abuse your body (smoke too much, drink too much, become obese, don’t sleep enough, stress-out a lot, don’t exercise), you’re more likely to develop heart disease. It’s also been known that heart disease has genetic effects, or that certain genes are involved with heart disease. A new [...]
Getting your head around huge brain projects