Epigenetics and cell diversity in the embryo

A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin has explored the role of factors in embryonic development that do not alter the sequence of DNA, but only epigenetically modify its "packaging". ...

European and American maize: Same same, but different

German researchers decoded the European maize genome. In comparison to North American maize lines, they discovered variations that underlie phenotypic differences and may also contribute to the heterosis effect. A better ...

New ways to keep proteins healthy outside the cell

With increasing age, and especially in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, proteins tend to misfold and aggregate into harmful deposits both inside and outside cells. Secreted proteins play an important role in ...

Desert algae shed light on desiccation tolerance in green plants

Deserts of the U.S. Southwest are extreme habitats for most plants, but, remarkably, microscopic green algae live there that are extraordinarily tolerant of dehydration. These tiny green algae (many just a few microns in ...

A genome-scale map of DNA methylation kinetics

While the first genome-wide DNA methylation map in mammalian cells was established over 10 years ago, such maps only provide snapshots and do not inform about the actual dynamics of this epigenetic mark. Researchers from ...

New technology will show how RNA regulates gene activity

The discovery of a huge number of long non-protein coding RNAs, aka lncRNAs, in the mammalian genome was a major surprise of the recent large-scale genomics projects. An international team including a bioinformatician from ...

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