Tag Archives: Epigenetic

How much of an expert are you on environmental toxins and epigenetic inheritance? Practically everyone is aware of DTT. Many of us are aware of the plasticizer BPA. But how many of us are aware of vinclozolin? If you work in the field of epigenetics, you should be. The lab of Michael Skinner, at Washington State University, has been able to use this fungicide to study transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in male rat germ lines. What is it, though? In this case, after initial exposure to the environmental toxin in utero, a transgenerational epigenetic inheritance phenotype exists at least through the third generation in a lineage, in absence of that toxin. The vinclozolin rat model was applied recently in the Skinner … Continue reading

Posted in Animal Models, Behavioral Epigenetics, Bioinformatics, Evolutionary Epigenetics, Microarray, Transcriptome | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Many of you are probably attending AACR this week. Cancer research into Epi-drugs is certainly a big theme. Along those lines, there is good news from the Cynthia Zahnow and Sephen Baylin teams at John Hopkins University in this paper, Hsing-Chen Tsai et al. Transient Low Doses of DNA-Demethylating Agents Exert Durable Antitumor Effets on Hematological and Epithelial Tumor Cells.(March 2012) Cancer Cell 21, 430–446 . I’ll highlight the best bits. Obviously, the paper is awesome, and you need to read the details! The authors explain one of the most “striking effects” they observed is their accumulated evidence that this low dosage epigenetic chemotherapy can broadly reprogram stem-like cancer cells in solid cancers. Now, the exact molecular mechanisms of these … Continue reading

Posted in Biomarkers, DNA Methylation, Flow Cytometry, Genomewide Methylation Profiling, Leukemia, Methylated DNA Capture, Oncology, Pharmacology / Toxicology, Stem Cells, Translational Research | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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