Scientists at Stanford University have found a way to induce cell death in cancer cells with a method that could be effective in around 50% of cancers. In a paper, "Rewiring cancer drivers to activate apoptosis," published ...
Published in Nature Microbiology, a study in mice finds that the microbial basis for urinary tract infections can include localized epigenetic alterations that make additional infections more likely.
Researchers at University of Illinois and City University of New York have recently carried out a study investigating the effects of early acoustic experiences on gene activation in songbirds. Their paper, published in Elsevier's ...
Keeping egg cells in stasis during childhood is a key part of female fertility. New research published today in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology sheds some light on the role of epigenetics in placing egg cells into ...
Jan 1, 2018
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(Medical Xpress)—A team of researchers with Fudan University in China has found that male rats are able to pass on their susceptibility to cocaine addiction through non-genetic means. In their paper published in the journal ...
Graying hair, crow's feet, an injury that's taking longer to heal than when we were 20—faced with the unmistakable signs of aging, most of us have had a least one fantasy of turning back time. Now, scientists at the Salk ...
Dec 15, 2016
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Some people take stress in stride; others are done in by it. New research at Rockefeller University has identified the molecular mechanisms of this so-called stress gap in mice with very similar genetic backgrounds—a finding ...
Sep 2, 2014
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(Medical Xpress)—A panel of academics with members from several institutions in the U.S. has published a Comment piece in the journal Nature asking journalists to be more careful in how they portray the results of epigenetic ...
(Medical Xpress)—Bisphenol A (BPA) is a common chemical found in household plastics. Previous studies on rodents show that BPA exposure is associated with problems with brain and behavioral development. There is evidence ...
In 2009, the DNA alphabet expanded. Scientists discovered that an extra letter or "sixth nucleotide" was surprisingly abundant in DNA from stem cells and brain cells.
Oct 30, 2011
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In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- (Greek: επί- over, above, outer) -genetics. Examples of such changes might be DNA methylation or histone deacetylation, both of which serve to suppress gene expression without altering the sequence of the silenced genes. In 2011, it was demonstrated that the methylation of mRNA has a critical role in human energy homeostasis. This opened the field of RNA epigenetics.
These changes may remain through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell's life and may also last for multiple generations. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism; instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism's genes to behave (or "express themselves") differently.
One example of epigenetic changes in eukaryotic biology is the process of cellular differentiation. During morphogenesis, totipotent stem cells become the various pluripotent cell lines of the embryo which in turn become fully differentiated cells. In other words, a single fertilized egg cell – the zygote – changes into the many cell types including neurons, muscle cells, epithelium, endothelium of blood vessels etc. as it continues to divide. It does so by activating some genes while inhibiting others.
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