Category: novel-research
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Old proteins, new tricks
In order to switch genes on and off, chromatin has to be opened and shut, enabling the DNA to become open to the whim of the rest of the nucleus for transcription. This is called chromatin remodelling, and it’s far from an easy task because our DNA is wrapped around huge protein complexes called nucleosomes.…
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Decoding the molecular wiring underlying early development
Schematic of a poised enhancer, its associated modifications, and how it contacts its target gene. Designed in Biorender by me, 2023 (Figure 1B, BSc thesis) In the earliest stages of human development, it’s vital that genes are expressed at very specific times and places. If this goes wrong, developmental defects can arise. Enhancer regions, particularly…
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Stressed cells offload damaged DNA to their neighbours
During cellular stress, cells bundle broken DNA into micronuclei, which are then shuttled through microscopic tubes like a train travelling through a tunnel. Picture from here, under CC BY 2.0. DNA is precious; without it, our cells would not be able to survive. As such, it’s kept safely within the confines of the nucleus. The…
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Chromatin couples are needed to form loops
Guest Blog Series 2026 By Andres Hernandez Maduro Chromosomal DNA strands are long. In each of your body cells, there is approximately two metres worth of DNA packed tightly in a chamber (the nucleus) around five micrometres in diameter. They are also quite sticky, and if thrown into a random soup of molecules will tend…
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A tale of two sequences
Lego bricks join up easily, with each part having a distinct function. Photo by Arto Alanenpää on Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Biology never makes things easy for us. It’s tempting to think of the genome as a well-oiled machine, with separate regions that join neatly together like Lego bricks to perform an overall…
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The vault: 40-year-old cellular mystery one step closer to being solved
A vault particle. Image adapted from Tanaka et al. on Wikimedia Commons under CC BY SA-3.0. In 1986, researcher Nancy Kedersha and her supervisor Leonard Rome sat in the basement of the UCLA Biological Chemistry Department, next to an intimidating electron microscope that towered over the rest of the room. After several days of meticulously…
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DNA repair leaves unexpected scars
Artistic rendition of enzymes repairing a DNA break. Image from Flickr.com, courtesy of Tom Ellenberger, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Dave Gohara, Saint Louis University School of Medicine, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. Hi again! I hope everyone had a great Christmas period and New Year. After a few weeks off…
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Epigenetics Wrapped 2025
Since it’s coming up to the end of the year, and since Spotify Wrapped came out the other week (despite it saying my listening age was 76!), I thought I’d do my own roundup of 10 exciting and impactful findings in epigenetics and -genomics published in 2025. Here goes! 1. A detailed, single-cell methylation map…
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Switching memories on and off
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí. Sourced from brushandbubbles.com under CC BY-NC 4.0. “Oh Science and Progress! / You great big wonderful world! Oh what have you done?” – Sir John Betjeman, 1940 Ever find yourself randomly thinking about an embarrassing memory, something you said or did years ago, and wishing you could forget…
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RNA previously dismissed as “noise” now shown to produce functional proteins
Schematic of transcription regulation in mammalian cells. Enhancer RNAs (eRNAs) can be seen being transcribed from enhancers (yellow). Image from Bernstein0275 on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0. I have a confession! A few months ago, I started a post with the sentence: “Enhancers are non-coding elements which are littered throughout the mammalian genome.” – me,…