Latest Epigenetics Stories
In a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease, memory problems stem from an overactive enzyme that shuts off genes related to neuron communication, a new study says. When researchers genetically blocked the enzyme, called HDAC2, they 'reawakened' some of the neurons and restored the animals' cognitive function. The results suggest that drugs that inhibit this particular enzyme would make good treatments for some of the most devastating effects of the incurable neurodegenerative disease. "It's...
The domestication of chickens has given rise to rapid and extensive changes in genome function. A research team at Linköping University in Sweden has established that the changes are heritable, although they do not affect the DNA structure. Humans kept Red Junglefowl as livestock about 8000 years ago. Evolutionarily speaking, the sudden emergence of an enormous variety of domestic fowl of different colours, shapes and sizes has occurred in record time. The traditional Darwinian...
In a look at how major stressors during childhood can change a person's biological risk for psychiatric disorders, researchers at Butler Hospital have discovered a genetic alteration at the root of the association. The research, published online in PLoS ONE on January 25, 2012, suggests that childhood adversity may lead to epigenetic changes in the human glucocorticoid receptor gene, an important regulator of the biological stress response that may increase risk for psychiatric disorders....
Study highlights the interaction between epigenetics and genetics and exposure to a flame retardant in mice Mice genetically engineered to be susceptible to autism-like behaviors that were exposed to a common flame retardant were less fertile and their offspring were smaller, less sociable and demonstrated marked deficits in learning and long-term memory when compared with the offspring of normal unexposed mice, a study by researchers at UC Davis has found. The researchers said the study...
Writing in the February 17, 2012 issue of the journal Cell, researchers at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Toronto Western Research Institute peel away some of the enduring mystery of how zygotes or fertilized eggs determine which copies of parental genes will be used or ignored. In developing humans and other mammals, not all genes are created equal – or equally used. The expression of certain genes, known as...
More than just packaging, the genome affects the way our genes change and develop, says a TAU researcher Since Charles Darwin first put forth the theory of evolution, scientists have been trying to unlock the mysteries of genetics. But research on the genome — the organism's entire hereditary package encoded in DNA and RNA — has been less extensive. There is a tendency to think of the genome as a static and passive container of information, says Dr. Ehud Lamm of Tel Aviv University's...
Mental illness suspect genes are among the most environmentally responsive For the first time, scientists have tracked the activity, across the lifespan, of an environmentally responsive regulatory mechanism that turns genes on and off in the brain's executive hub. Among key findings of the study by National Institutes of Health scientists: genes implicated in schizophrenia and autism turn out to be members of a select club of genes in which regulatory activity peaks during an...
Genome Research (www.genome.org) publishes online and in print today a special issue entitled, "Cancer Genomics," highlighting insights gained form cutting-edge genomic and epigenomic analyses of cancer. Included in this special issue are novel biological insights gained from genomic analyses of pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, and melanoma, including, functional genomic analyses of breast cancer genes, large scale colorectal and breast cancer epigenomics, advances in methodology...
Thirty-thousand-year-old bison bones discovered in permafrost at a Canadian goldmine are helping scientists unravel the mystery about how animals adapt to rapid environmental change. The bones play a key role in a world-first study, led by University of Adelaide researchers, which analyses special genetic modifications that turn genes on and off, without altering the DNA sequence itself. These 'epigenetic' changes can occur rapidly between generations – without requiring the time for...
Glioblastomas grow extremely aggressively into healthy brain tissue and, moreover, are highly resistant to radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Therefore, they are regarded as the most malignant type of brain tumor. Currently available treatment methods are frequently not very effective against this type of cancer. Glioblastoma can affect people of all ages, but is less common in children than in adults. In order to gain a better understanding of the molecular processes involved in the...
