Monthly Archives: November 2011

Viral Etiquette Tips : The Epigenetic Effects of Life Long Guests

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Nicole Kelesoglu

Hello E3 scientists! Here are three etiquette tips for the modern virus. This week’s post is a bit of “tongue in cheek”, while pointing out some neat virology & epigenetics research!!!

Posted in Acetylation, Bioinformatics, Cellular Biology, Chromatin Structure, DNA Methylation, Genomewide Methylation Profiling, Immunology, Methylation, Oncogenes, Virology, chIP | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

The Epigenetic Two-Punch Cancer Treatment from Johns Hopkins

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Chris Womack

The big news in epigenetics this week is a two-drug epigenetic combo that shows results as good as the best FDA-approved chemotherapy in fighting non-small cell lung cancer, which accounts for about 80 percent such cancers. But missing from a lot of the mainstream accounts, the related study took a look at blood-based biomarkers, finding that they might serve as good indicators of whether a patient’s responding to treatment. Conducted by Johns Hopkins University’s Rosalind Juergens and colleagues, the phase I/II trial appears to be the most successful study of an epigenetic treatment of a solid tumor. I say this all the time, but keep in mind we’re still talking about a small sample size–the researchers studied 45 patients taking … Continue reading →

Posted in Applications, DNA Methylation, Diagnostics, Histone Modifications, Methyltransferases, Personalized Medicine, Translational Research | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bee-lieve it! Epigenetics Differentiates the Hive : Guest Post by NEB Scientist Rick Feehery

Posted on November 11, 2011 by New England Biolabs

Keeping honeybees runs in our family. My wife’s father keeps many hives, his father kept hives, his father and so on. Our one hive this year produced over 30 pound of honey. Fresh honey is a real treat as the flavor stems from the local fauna: purple loosestrife and apple blossoms. Very different from what you get from the local food mart. Aside from the obvious agricultural benefit that honeybee provides, pollination of plants in the food chain, they are really fascinating insects to observe. Every other year on average in the spring time when the weather is warm and the sky is clear, we can hear a district loud buzzing sound from the hive. A mass exodus of bees … Continue reading →

Posted in Animal Models, DNA Methylation, Methyltransferases, Nutrigenomics | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Epigenetics of the Heart

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Chris Womack

Researchers are really closing in on the molecular factors behind heart failure, and this week brought two interesting bits of news in that area. In epigenetic research, the University of Cambridge’s Dr. Roger Foo and colleagues published what seems to be the very first epigenome-wide association study comparing normal hearts to failed hearts, finding among other things that in cells of failed hearts, there seems to be more CpG methylation in intragenic regions, while upregulated genes show lower CpG-island methylation. And just a week before, researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center published results from the PROTECT study, which took a close look at whether it’s useful for doctors to use chaning levels of the protein NT-proBNP to guide … Continue reading →

Posted in Applications, Biomarkers, DNA Methylation, Gene Regulation, Genomewide Methylation Profiling, Pharmacogenomics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment