Latest Epigenomic map Stories

Over the last 50 years, the spotting of newborn's blood onto filter paper for disease screening, called Guthrie cards, has become so routine that since 2000, more than 90% of newborns in the United States have had Guthrie cards created. In a study published online in Genome Research, researchers have shown that epigenetic information stored on archived Guthrie cards provides a retrospective view of the epigenome at birth, a powerful new application for the card that could help understand...

Exploring the epigenome’s regulatory function The sequencing of the human genome has provided a wealth of genetic information, yet the goal of understanding the function of every gene remains outstanding. New research from the University of Illinois published in Cell suggests determining the purpose of genes through a new method they call “comparative epigenomics.” “Comparative epigenomics is to use interspecies comparison of DNA and histone modifications—as an approach for...

Scientists from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research have published a paper, online Feb. 22 in Nature Cell Biology, describing gene expression in a prostate cancer cell: more sweeping, more targeted and more complex than we could ever have imagined, even five years ago.The study shows that changes within the prostate cancer cell 'epigenome' (biochemical processes that target DNA and affect gene expression) alter the expression of many genes, silencing their expression within large...

Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King's College London, have identified numerous novel regions of the genome where the chemical modifications involved in controlling gene expression are influenced by either genetic variation or the parental origin of that particular stretch of DNA. This contradicts previous assumptions that epigenetic signals are generally equal across both copies of a given region of the genome, except at a small number of known imprinted genes.Sequencing...