#epigenetic

I feel it. Changes at the epigenetic level. It's like - an internal machine with parts that move in and out of place. Shift, rotate, drop, some spin out of control and haven't stopped. It's more than alot. But it's all I've got.

Heart strings are real And they can be used as chaps. Giving the most painful back slaps. Or they can be braided And swung around like a hammock To support and soothe the heart.

Gone for a ride but here to subside More than a runaway bride. It was just pride. Who I Am can no longer be denied. And I don't want to fucking hide. All these tears I've cried. While they all kept up the lie And tried To destroy who I was inside.

But now it's time to pick a side. And I choose mine. It's about damn time. Like a well oiled machine, I'll shine. Just needed to free my mind. Leave it all behind. Forgiveness has been harder than I thought To find. But the help I get, Must be Divine. Letting me clear the line. Of all the bullshit and trauma That stained me like wine. Said I'd be fine. And more Love they applied. Even got a few more Spirit Guides. That's what really helps in my life. People are so...mmh But nature just is. It can't be denied, It doesn't need to lie. Is that such a bad way to live? If so tell me why?

"Describing your work as unethical would be a kindness."

The University of California, Los Angeles researchers gave slight electric shocks bunch of donor slugs, which made those slugs more skittish about being touched. They then transplanted genetic material from those slugs into slugs that had never been shocked. This changed the behavior of the recipient slugs as well: They contracted their siphons in response to a touch for longer periods of time than slugs that had received transplanted genetic material from unshocked donors.

The team hopes to one day figure out exactly how our brains physically store memories. Some scientists think that the body stores long-term memories by structural changes in the synapses, the connections between brain cells, according to the new paper published in eNeuro. But others think perhaps the body stores memories inside the brain cells’ genetic material through epigenetic changes. These are changes that reveal or hide parts of the genetic code, rather than alterations to the code itself.

By observing the naive slugs withdraw longer only if they received RNA from a shocked host, the researchers felt they’d found evidence that these epigenetic changes were storing memories of the shocks. Note—slugs don’t have brains exactly, but clusters of nerve cells distributed through their bodies. These nerve cells are some of the largest in the animal kingdom.

The study’s lead author, David Glanzman, told the BBC that “If memories were stored at synapses, there is no way our experiment would have worked.” His team also noted that neurons in a petri dish fired more if they received an injection of RNA from the shocked slugs than if they received RNA from unshocked slugs.

[...] Tomás Ryan, from Trinity College Dublin, told the Guardian that he remained skeptical, and wouldn’t even call the transferred behavior a memory. “This work tells me that maybe the most basic behavioral responses involve some kind of switch in the animal and there is something in the soup that Glanzman extracts that is hitting that switch.”

Scientific American reports that, even still, the idea challenges some more widely-held views about how brains store memories. But it’s going to take way more research to establish the importance of epigenetics in long-term memory storage.

The biology of uterine fluid: How it informs the fetus of mom's world

A developing fetus bathes in a mixture of cellular secretions and proteins unique to its mother's uterus. Before fertilization, the pH of uterine fluid helps create a conducive environment for sperm migration, and afterward, its volume supports the embryo as it implants onto the wall of the uterus. Recent evidence suggests that uterine fluid may play another key role in embryonic development: communicating the mother's outside conditions to the fetus, so that the latter can prepare accordingly. A review of this research appears on June 22 in Trends in Molecular Medicine.

Studies in livestock, rodents, and humans have shown that information from a mother's environment (e.g., food availability, stress, and pollutant exposure) can leave epigenetic tags on the DNA of her fetus, potentially influencing the progression and long-term health of the developing embryo. Scientists have hypothesized that blood flow via the placenta might constitute one way the body communicates the mother's condition to the fetus, yet there is evidence that the fetus can react to changes such as those stemming from the mother's diet long before the establishment of the placenta.

"This suggests the involvement of uterine fluid as the communication medium to transfer information between the maternal environment and the floating embryo," says senior author En-Kui Duan, a reproductive biologist at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. "The preimplantation period is a critical time for programming offspring health, and thus, expecting mothers should keep a good diet and good mood, and stay away from harmful chemicals during this critical window."

Ying Zhang, Qiang Wang, Hongmei Wang, Enkui Duan. Uterine Fluid in Pregnancy: A Biological and Clinical Outlook. Trends in Molecular Medicine, 2017; 23 (7): 604 DOI: 10.1016/j.molmed.2017.05.002

Circles Around Cancer

Our knowledge of cancer is benefiting hugely from big data – the huge amounts of information flooding out of modern analysis. The next challenge is making sense of it all. This circular infographic reveals discoveries from one patient’s cancer. Each circle represents 23 regions of DNA (called chromosomes) found in healthy cells in their colon (inner ring), a colon tumour (middle circle) and a metastatic cancer, which spread to their liver (outer blue ring). Although DNA mutations are frequent in cancer, it’s not the DNA that is changing here, but the chemicals that surround it – the epigenome. For example, chemicals wrapped around chromosome number 4 (maroon) in the healthy colon (dark blue lines, inner ring) fade in the cancerous cells (light blue, outer rings). Epigenetics is crucial to how normal and diseased cells use their DNA, and this detailed information could lead to targeted therapies in years to come.

Written by John Ankers

Image by IDIBELL (Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute), Spain

Cancer Epigenetics and Biology Program, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), Barcelona, Spain

Image copyright held by original authors

Research published in Oncogene, June 2017

NOL1/NOP2/SUN domain family member 2 (NSUN2), a member of the RNA methyltransferase family responsible for catalysing 5-methylcytosine (m5 C) modifications, has been increasingly recognized as a key regulatory factor in the initiation and progression of cancer. A growing body of evidence indicates that NSUN2 is aberrantly expressed in multiple malignancies, such as hepatocellular carcinoma,…

This postdoc combines molecular biology and disease modeling to better understand genetic blindness. Image credit:Arjun Kumar, ©iStock.com, blackdovfx Arpita Dave is a postdoctoral researcher in Roxana Radu’s group at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on Stargardt disease, a genetic form of blindness. In this Postdoc Portrait, she discusses her recent projects and…