Latest Methylation Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online If you look around at your friends and family, it is clear our biological clocks tick differently. Women tend to live longer than men do, some individuals can look years younger – or older – than their chronological age, and diseases can affect our aging process. The University of California, San Diego School of Medicine led a new study, published online in the journal Molecular Cell, that describes markers and a model that...

IRVING, Texas, Nov. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Caris Life Sciences(TM), a leading biosciences company focused on enabling personalized healthcare through molecular profiling and blood-based diagnostic services, has added ROS1 and MGMT-Methylation to the company's evidence-based molecular profiling service. The company is one of only a few entities that offer both of these tests commercially. These markers are believed to serve as clinically-important aids in the development of...

IPSWICH, Mass., Nov. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- New England Biolabs (NEB) has recently received a $640,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to expand its research and product development of novel enzymatic tools for epigenetic analysis. This latest grant adds to the more than $1.1 million of SBIR funds awarded for this research since 2009. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090921/NE79207LOGO-b ) Since its establishment in 1974, NEB has been dedicated...

Researchers locate molecules that drive the development of 3 forms of deadly white blood cell cancers, pointing researchers to new potential therapeutic targets A team of national and international researchers, led by Weill Cornell Medical College scientists, have decoded the key "software" instructions that drive three of the most virulent forms of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). They discovered ALL's "software" is encoded with epigenetic marks, chemical modifications of DNA and...

A University of British Columbia and Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT) study has revealed that childhood poverty, stress as an adult, and demographics such as age, sex and ethnicity, all leave an imprint on a person’s genes. And, that this imprint could play a role in our immune response. The study was published last week in a special volume of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that looks at how experiences beginning before birth and in the years...

It can be detected an epigenetic alteration associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in the sick twin a few years before the clinical diagnosis Monozygotic twins have the same genome, that is, the same DNA molecule in both siblings. Despite being genetically identical, both twins may have different diseases at different times. This phenomenon is called "twin discordance". But how can people who have the same genetic sequence present different pathologies and at different ages?...

Over the last two decades, scientists have come to understand that the genetic code held within DNA represents only part of the blueprint of life. The rest comes from specific patterns of chemical tags that overlay the DNA structure, determining how tightly the DNA is packaged and how accessible certain genes are to be switched on or off. As researchers have uncovered more and more of these "epigenetic" tags, they have begun to wonder how they are all connected. Now, research from the...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Genetic analysis of different types of worker bees has for the first time demonstrated a link between reversible chemical tags on an organism's DNA and their behavioral patterns. Andy Feinberg, a professor of molecular medicine and the director of the Center for Epigenetics at Hopkins' Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences, and colleagues used a method they called CHARM (comprehensive high-throughput arrays for relative...

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The sequencing of the human genome was once hailed by scientists to be the harbinger of medical miracles. Yet, deciphering our DNA brought us no closer to understanding -- much less finding effective preventive approaches for -- major chronic diseases. But new groundbreaking research is uncovering a higher level of complexity beyond genetic variation. Even better news: proper nutrition can produce positive changes at this higher level. A...

Researchers show how repressor proteins ensure accurate gene expression by thwarting histone exchange Two opposing teams battle it out to regulate gene expression on the DNA playing field. One, the activators, keeps DNA open to enzymes that transcribe DNA into RNA. Their repressor opponents antagonize that effort by twisting DNA into an inaccessible coil around histone proteins, an amalgam called chromatin, effectively blocking access to DNA by enzymes that elongate an RNA strand. Both...