March 2017 | What is Epigenetics?

Most Dangerous Lifestyle Activity Uncovered in New Epigenetic Mortality Risk Profile

March 28, 2017 Bailey Kirkpatrick

Aging and mortality has been a fascinating topic of interest recently, particularly in the field of epigenetics. What are the chemical DNA markers of age? Can we look at someone’s epigenome to determine their risk for death? Could we reverse these epigenetic tags to restore youth or undo the pesky physical characteristics and diseases that come with getting old? And are there lifestyle changes we may need to make to epigenetically improve our own health? Although we are far from [more…]

Epigenetic Benefits of Cypress Tree Chemical Hinokitiol

Natural Compound in Cypress Trees Might Epigenetically Protect Against Cancer

March 21, 2017 Bailey Kirkpatrick

A chemical in an essential oil extracted from tree bark might actually reduce cancer growth. Researchers are finding that hinokitiol, a compound found in some cypress trees, not only has anti-infective and anti-oxidative properties, but it might also impact the epigenetic tags on top of DNA and reactivate genes that fight against tumor growth. The epigenetic mechanism known as DNA methylation has been crucial to our understanding of cancer. Irregular methylation suppresses genes that work to reduce tumor growth, which [more…]

Epigenetic Marks on DNA Determine Left or Right Handedness

Can Epigenetics Explain the Mystery of Right and Left Handedness?

March 14, 2017 Bailey Kirkpatrick

Are you among the 90% of people who are right-handed or the 10% who are lefties? Have you ever wondered why you naturally favor a certain hand over the other? Now, researchers are suggesting that epigenetics could be the explanation. They are finding that handedness may not be dictated by the brain, as previously thought, but by the environment and epigenetic marks in the spinal cord. “These results fundamentally change our understanding of the cause of hemispheric asymmetries,” the authors concluded [more…]

Histone H2A.Z Epigenetics and Rice Seedlings

Sunshine and Epigenetics: Altering Histone Variant H2A.Z Turnover and Gene Expression in Rice Seedlings

March 7, 2017 Sadman Sakib

Have you ever thought of how the day-night cycle can epigenetically affect plants? Latest research from Zhang et al. has shown a possible mechanism of how histone variants can negatively regulate gene expression in day-night cycles of rice seedling tissues. This paves a way for an exciting area of research of how histone variants can be differentially deposited in a very short time span, in order to fine tune the transcription due to the environmental stimuli in plants. Histones variants, [more…]

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