4 of the 5 participants in the project, from left to right: Liza, Laura, William and Khademul
Recently epigenetic modifications have drawn lots of attention in the oncology field. Cancer is characterized by aberrant patterns of gene expression of multiple genes. These major shifts in gene expression are believed to be due to genetic and epigenetic changes. Read the rest of this entry »
Our lab has a long term and successful collaboration with the lab of Elizaveta Benevolenskaya from the University Illinois Chicago. Liza and I met back in 2006 in a meeting in Cold Spring Harbor and from then on we have continuously collaborated in several projects related to the study of regulatory pathways in cancer. Read the rest of this entry »
ChIP-seq (Chromatin Immunoprecipitation-and-Sequencing) has become a popular technique to find de novo and genome-wide binding sites of transcription factors. One of the basic yet laborious steps of this technique is the chromatin immunoprecipitation: If not even the positive control gives a signal after a 3-day experiment, and no mistake can be spotted in the preparation of the reagents or in following the steps of the protocol, most likely the protocol itself needs some optimization. Read the rest of this entry »
Waddington's epigenetic landscape, from C.H. Waddington The strategy of genes: a discussion of some aspects of theoretical biology (Allen & Unwin, 1957)
Genomes contains the information necessary to form all the different types of cells present in the adult form. During embryonic development, the rapidly dividing cells in early embryo have a future of immense possibilities ahead. As exciting as this might sound, at some point they have to decide what kind of cells they will be in the future. Read the rest of this entry »