Latest Methylation Stories

While examining patterns of DNA modification in lung cancer, a team of international researchers has discovered what they say is a surprising new mechanism. They say that "silencing" of a single gene in lung cancer led to a general impairment in genome-wide changes in cells, contributing to cancer development and progression.In the January 1, 2009, issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, they also report finding a strong link between...

Eric Selker's lab reports progress on biochemical communications among proteins involved in gene silencingResearchers in a University of Oregon lab have shed more light on the mechanism that regulates DNA methylation, a fundamental biological process in which a methyl group is attached to DNA, the genetic material in cells of living organisms.DNA methylation is essential for normal growth and development in plants and animals. It has been implicated in long-term memory, and irregularities in...

The Stowers Institute's Workman Lab has discovered a novel histone demethylase protein complex characterized in work published today in Molecular Cell.The Histone H3 protein is an important component of chromatin, the packing material wrapping up chromosomal DNA and preventing unwanted transcription of the message encoded in the DNA. Histone H3 can be altered by adding (methylating) or removing (demethylating) methyl groups from the histone protein. When genes are transcribed, parts of...

Gene packaging tells story of cancer developingTo decipher how cancer develops, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigators say researchers must take a closer look at the packaging.Specifically, their findings in the December 2, 2008, issue of PLoS Biology point to the three dimensional chromatin packaging around genes formed by tight, rosette-like loops of Polycomb group proteins (PcG). The chromatin packaging, a complex combination of DNA and proteins that compress DNA to fit inside...

Canadian researchers are trying to answer why some smokers develop lung cancer while others remain disease free, despite similar lifestyle changes.Results were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's Seventh Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people die from lung cancer than any other cancer type. In fact, according to 2004 data, more people died from lung cancer than...

U.S. and Dutch researchers suggest prenatal exposure to famine can lead to epigenetic -- gene -- changes that may affect a person's health into midlife. Researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York and the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands said previous studies have suggested that adult disease risk may be associated with adverse environmental conditions early in development, these data are the first to show that early-life environmental...

ST. LOUIS, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sigma-Aldrich today introduced its Imprint(TM) Methylated DNA Quantification Kit (MDQ1) for epigenetic research http://www.sigma-aldrich.com/mdq1. The Methylated DNA Quantification Kit employs a familiar ELISA-like procedure, with no radioactivity or chromatography, to measure global methylation in less than four hours. The kits are effective with a DNA input as low as 5ng of fully methylated DNA and are arranged in a flexible 8-well assay...

Canadian and Hungarian scientists say they've discovered DNA from suicide victims who suffered major depression shows an important chemical modification. Dr. Michael Poulter of the University of Western Ontario led a team of researchers in comparing brain tissue from a group of people who suffered a major depressive disorder and committed suicide, with the brain tissue of people who had died from heart attacks and other causes. The researchers said they found an increased rate of DNA...

Are genes destiny? Alternatively, are we simply the products of our environment? There is a growing sense that neither of these two possibilities fully captures the essence of the risk for psychiatric disorders. New light is being shed on the complex interaction of genetic and environmental factors as the result of growth in the field of epigenetics. While genetics is the study of how variation in gene sequence or "genotype" influences traits or "phenotypes," epigenetics...

Epigenomics, a cancer molecular diagnostics company, has reported positive final results from its prognostic prostate cancer study. The clinical study analyzed paraffin embedded tissue samples from 476 prostate cancer patients collected at four major clinical centers in Europe and the US who had undergone radical prostatectomy, with the objective of validating the prognostic utility of Epigenomics's proprietary biomarker, PITX2. The primary endpoint of the study was to evaluate the...