Tag Archives: histone ubiquination

Canada Joins the International Human Epigenome Consortium – Q&A with Tomi Pastinen of Génome Québec

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Chris Womack

In an ambitious project investigating the interplay of environment, disease, and epigenetics, Canada is funneling $41 million into epigenomics research. It’s a multi-pronged effort to scrutinize a variety of tissue samples, disease states, and responses to environmental insults, so I called up Tomi Pastinen, the Canada research chair in human genetics, to learn more about the project. Here’s a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. But first, more about the project itself. It’s Canada’s entrée into the International Human Epigenome Consortium, and its announcement last week follows closely on the heels of last year’s launch of a European IHEC effort, BLUEPRINT (see our interview with the project’s Henk Stunnenberg here). While BLUEPRINT focused on blood epigenomes, which is common in … Continue reading →

Posted in Animal Models, Applications, DNA Methylation, Epigenome, Gene Regulation, Genomewide Methylation Profiling, Histone Modifications, Metabolism, Neuroscience, Next Gen Sequencing, Sodium Bisulfite Sequencing, Transcriptome | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

More of Adenovirus’s Epigenetic Tricks

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Chris Womack

Adenovirus’s epigenetic power to reprogram cells goes beyond its ability to cause tumorous replication — G.J. Fonseca and colleagues at the Western University of Ontario report in the new Cell Host & Microbe that it’s also able to sabotage the interferon response, which usually functions as a first line of defense in infected cells. In an April post, I interviewed Roberto Ferrari about adenovirus research and its ability to push cells back into active tumor-like replication, so I thought this bit of news was an interesting incremental step in overall knowledge of how invaders — particularly adenovirus — use epigenetics against us. What a bunch of jerks! In particular, Fonseca and colleagues used a yeast two-hybrid screen to find out … Continue reading →

Posted in Chromatin Structure, Gene Regulation, Histone Modifications, Histones, Microbial Epigenetics, Ubiquitination, Virology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Histones Signal Other Proteins Too

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Chris Womack

Here’s an epigenetics first. It turns out that intermolecular signaling in epigenetics — all that ubiquination, methylation, and so forth — doesn’t always end at DNA or histones, where those two components go on just to regulate genes (or to encourage more modification of themselves and each other). Nope, John Latham and colleagues at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center reported in Cell last week that there’s at least one case — in yeast — in which a modified histone allows a non-histone protein to methylate another non-histone protein. That is, the signal travels from the Paf1 complex, to histone H2BK123 by ubiquination, to the COMPASS complex — which needs that ubiquination to di-methylate Dam1. (It’s far more … Continue reading →

Posted in Applications, Chromatin Structure, DNA Methylation, Gene Regulation, Histone Modifications, Methylation, Methyltransferases, Phosphorylation, Ubiquitination | Tagged , , | Leave a comment