News tagged with dna methylation
Childhood trauma leaves mark on DNA of some victims
Abused children are at high risk of anxiety and mood disorders, as traumatic experience induces lasting changes to their gene regulation. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich have ...
Neuroscience
Dec 02, 2012 |
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Cancer cells' universal 'dark matter' exposed
Using the latest gene sequencing tools to examine so-called epigenetic influences on the DNA makeup of colon cancer, a Johns Hopkins team says its results suggest cancer treatment might eventually be more tolerable and successful ...
Cancer
Jun 26, 2011 |
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Exercise changes your DNA
You might think that the DNA you inherited is one thing that you absolutely can't do anything about, but in one sense you'd be wrong. Researchers reporting in the March issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, have f ...
Genetics
Mar 06, 2012 |
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Acute stress alters control of gene activity
Acute stress alters the methylation of the DNA and thus the activity of certain genes. This is reported by researchers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum together with colleagues from Basel, Trier and London for the first ...
Psychology & Psychiatry
Aug 15, 2012 |
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Methylome modifications offer new measure of our 'biological' age
Women live longer than men. Individuals can appear or feel years younger – or older – than their chronological age. Diseases can affect our aging process. When it comes to biology, our clocks clearly tick differently.
Medical research
Nov 21, 2012 |
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Differences between human twins at birth highlight importance of intrauterine environment
Your genes determine much about you, but environment can have a strong influence on your genes even before birth, with consequences that can last a lifetime. In a study published online in Genome Research, researchers have f ...
Genetics
Jul 15, 2012 |
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Epigenetic reprogramming: Research discovers how epigenetic information could be inherited
New research reveals a potential way for how parents' experiences could be passed to their offspring's genes. The research was published today, 25 January, in the journal Science.
Genetics
Jan 24, 2013 |
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Controlling patterns of DNA methylation
A study performed by scientists in Dirk Schübeler's team at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel identifies DNA sequences that autonomously determine DNA methylation patterns. ...
Genetics
Oct 28, 2011 |
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Researchers characterize epigenetic fingerprint of 1,628 people
Until a decade, it was believed that differences between people were due solely to the existence of genetic changes, which are alterations in the sequence of our genes. The discoveries made during these last ten years show ...
Genetics
Jun 02, 2011 |
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Unraveling genomic changes in the brain
Scientists have known for some time that individual organisms are far more than the sum of their gene sequences. So-called epigenetic variations encompass a diverse array of chemical modifications to DNA that ...
Cancer
Aug 08, 2011 |
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Gene regulator in brain's executive hub tracked across lifespan
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 ...
Autism spectrum disorders
Feb 02, 2012 |
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Common flame retardant linked to social, behavioral and learning deficits
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 ...
Genetics
Feb 16, 2012 |
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Possible role for Huntington's gene discovered
About 20 years ago, scientists discovered the gene that causes Huntington's disease, a fatal neurodegenerative disorder that affects about 30,000 Americans. The mutant form of the gene has many extra DNA ...
Genetics
Jan 16, 2013 |
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New epigenetic mechanisms for improved cancer therapy
A review article by researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) proposes a new epigenetic hypothesis linked to tumor production and novel ideas about what causes progenitor cells to develop into cancer cells. ...
Cancer
Feb 19, 2013 |
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New insights into how genes turn on and off
Researchers at UC Davis and the University of British Columbia have shed new light on methylation, a critical process that helps control how genes are expressed. Working with placentas, the team discovered that 37 percent ...
Genetics
Mar 27, 2013 |
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DNA methylation
DNA methylation is a type of chemical modification of DNA that can be inherited and subsequently removed without changing the original DNA sequence. As such, it is part of the epigenetic code and is also the best characterized epigenetic mechanism. Because methylation is a common capability of all viruses for self non-self identification, the epigenetic code could be a persistent remnant of ancient viral infection events.
DNA methylation involves the addition of a methyl group to DNA — for example, to the number 5 carbon of the cytosine pyrimidine ring — in this case with the specific effect of reducing gene expression. DNA methylation at the 5 position of cytosine has been found in every vertebrate examined. In adult somatic tissues, DNA methylation typically occurs in a CpG dinucleotide context; non-CpG methylation is prevalent in embryonic stem cells.
In plants, cytosines are methylated both symmetrically (CpG or CpNpG) and asymmetrically (CpNpNp), where N can be any nucleotide but guanine.
Research has suggested that long term memory storage in humans may be regulated by DNA methylation.
For more information about DNA methylation, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
