Archive for June, 2007

Epigenomics AG Delivers Clinical Proof-of-Concept for Lung Cancer Detection

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

Epigenomics AG (Frankfurt:ECX) today announced that it has procured positive results from a clinical trial investigating the feasibility of a test to detect patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
The program aims at developing a blood based test for the reliable and convenient early detection of lung cancer. In an initial study last year Epigenomics [...]

Epigenetics Receives Green Light as Major Initiative in NIH Roadmap 1.5

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has concluded their selection process for a new cohort of Roadmap initiatives, approving four topics as Major Roadmap Initiatives. Two programs, epigenetics and microbiomes, were approved for immediate implementation as five year programs. The four programs approved as major roadmap initiatives are:
Microbiome - The goal of the proposed Human [...]

Epigenetic Natural Variation in Arabidopsis thaliana

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

A new research paper appearing today in PLoS Biology provides new insight into the DNA methylation patterns in the plant Araabidopsis thaliana:
Cytosine methylation of repetitive sequences is widespread in plant genomes, occurring in both symmetric (CpG and CpNpG) as well as asymmetric sequence contexts. We used the methylation-dependent restriction enzyme McrBC to profile methylated DNA [...]

CpG Methylation Targeted to Transcription Units in an Invertebrate Genome

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

I just came across an interesting research paper by Suzuki et al. in a recent issue of Genome Research: CpG methylation is targeted to transcription units in an invertebrate genome.
DNA is methylated at the dinucleotide CpG in genomes of a wide range of plants and animals. Among animals, variable patterns of genomic CpG methylation have [...]

Role of the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 in Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

New research published today in the journal Cancer Cell by Villa et al. sheds new light on the interaction between two gene regulation mechanisms: DNA methylation and the Polycomb protein complex.
Epigenetic changes are common alterations in cancer cells. Here, we have investigated the role of Polycomb group proteins in the establishment and maintenance of the [...]

Coming Soon: Broad Epigenetic Product Library from Sigma-Aldrich

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

This morning Sigma-Aldrich announced that it has signed a licensing agreement with Epigentek Group, Inc. for core technologies in DNA modification, methylation quantification and protein/DNA interaction. The first product, the Imprint DNA Modification Kit, is available starting this month. Sigma will also be offering kits for global methylation quantitation and chromatin immunoprecipitation based on Epigentek’s [...]

The DNA Network: Rapidly Expanding

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

The DNA Network was launched about a month ago with 12 blogs joining together to offer a network feed and other communication between bloggers. Since then, 5 other blogs have joined the network:

Discovering Biology in a Digital World
Mary Meets Dolly
Microarray and Bioinformatics
The Daily Transcript
VentureBeat

I have discovered some great new voices through the network. Maybe you’ll [...]

Free Epigenetics News Career Board Goes Live

Monday, June 11th, 2007

Since launching Epigenetics News in March 2006, I have received countless e-mails from companies and laboratories requesting information on posting an open position at the blog. On a few occasions I have posted the job opening here, but after looking for a better solution I chose to set up a separate job board for epigenetics-related [...]

Epigenomic Modifications Predict Active Promoters and Gene Structure in Toxoplasma gondii

Friday, June 8th, 2007

A new research article appeared today in the open access journal PLoS Pathogens with new insights into the epigenetics modifications regulating gene expression in the human pathogen Toxoplasma gondii:
Apicomplexan parasites, including Toxoplasma gondii, are responsible for a variety of deadly infections, but little is understood about how these important pathogens regulate gene expression. Initial studies [...]

Looking for a Guest Blogger

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007

So summer rolls around, and I expected to have more time for blogging, but it just hasn’t happened yet. I am working in the lab full-time and it has been very busy, as always. There are lots of things to take care of at home that were put off during the academic semesters in lieu [...]