SciTech Daily January 6, 2023 Diverse DNA-deforming processes are impacted by the local mechanical and structural properties of DNA, which in turn depend on local sequence and epigenetic modifications. Deciphering the mechanical code which impacts the diverse deforming processes has been a challenge. Utilizing high-throughput measurements of DNA bendability an international team of researchers (UK, USA – Johns Hopkins University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Spain) quantitatively established how the occurrence and spatial distribution of dinucleotides, tetranucleotides and methylated CpG impact DNA bendability. They used the measurements to develop a physical model for the sequence and methylation dependence of DNA bendability. […]
Tag Archives: Genetics
New study shows transmission of epigenetic memory across multiple generations
Phys.org September 26, 2022 Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have shown how a common type of epigenetic modification can be transmitted via sperm not only from parents to offspring, but to the next generation (“grand offspring”) as well. This “transgenerational epigenetic inheritance,” may explain how a person’s health and development could be influenced by the experiences of his or her parents and grandparents. They focused on epigenetic mark (called H3K27me3) in C. elegans. This mark is known to turn off or “repress” the affected genes. They selectively stripped the histone mark from the chromosomes of C. elegans sperm, which were […]
New database of 660,000 assembled bacterial genomes sheds light on the evolution of bacteria
Phys.com November 10, 2021 Open sharing of genomic data consists of genomes assembled with different tools and levels of quality checking, and large volumes of completely unprocessed raw sequence data. Considerable computational effort is required before biological questions can be addressed. Researchers in the UK assembled and characterized 661,405 bacterial genomes retrieved from the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) using a uniform standardized approach and produced a searchable COmpact Bit-sliced Signature (COBS) index, facilitating the easy interrogation of the entire dataset for a specific sequence. Additional MinHash and pp-sketch indices support genome-wide comparisons and estimations of genomic distance. 639,981 high-quality genomes […]
60-Year Scientific Mystery About DNA Replication Solved
SciTech Daily April 25, 2021 Previously an international team of researchers (USA – Florida State University, Emory University, University of Georgia, University of Illinois, Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, UK, Japan, Hong Kong) showed that each type of cell had a unique replication timing program and that diseased cells had distinct alterations in the program. In the current study, the team looked at how changes in the replication timing program impact the epigenome. They found that by eliminating a protein called RIF1, that helps to regulate DNA replication, the replication program was severely and sometimes, almost completely gone so that all […]