New tool brings standards to epigenetic studies

One of the most widely used tools in epigenetics research - the study of how DNA packaging affects gene expression - is chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), a technique that allows researchers to examine interactions between ...

Turning a vole into a mighty rodent

Take a wild, common forest-dwelling mouse-like rodent, known as a vole, and subject it to 13 rounds of selection for increased aerobic exercise metabolism, and what do you get? A mighty "mouse" with a 48 percent higher peak ...

Epigenetic 'switch' regulates RNA-protein interactions

Chemical changes - also known as epigenetic modifications - to messenger RNA (mRNA) are thought to play an important role in gene expression, and have recently been found to affect biological processes such as circadian clock ...

Baby cells learn to communicate using the lsd1 gene

We would not expect a baby to join a team or participate in social situations that require sophisticated communication. Yet, most developmental biologists have assumed that young cells, only recently born from stem cells ...

Environmental change leaves its footprint in the epigenome

(Phys.org) —Monozygotic twins look more similar when they are young than later in life. One of the reasons for this is epigenetic change in the form of chemical modifications of the DNA or its packaging proteins. Environmental ...

What gave us the advantage over extinct types of humans?

In parallel with modern man (Homo sapiens), there were other, extinct types of humans with whom we lived side by side, such as Neanderthals and the recently discovered Denisovans of Siberia. Yet only Homo sapiens survived. ...

Revolutionary new view on heritability in plants

Complex heritable traits are not only determined by changes in the DNA sequence. Scientists from the University of Groningen Bioinformatics Centre, together with their French colleagues, have shown that epigenetic marks can ...

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