The Chromatin Digest

Tag: chromatin

  • The epigenetics of winter

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    Isabella
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    Snow in Finland, 2022. Picture is my own. If you’re in the UK, you’ve probably noticed the turn in the weather we’ve had recently. Half the trees have shed their autumn leaves, forming dark red blankets across the wet pavements, and if you leave the house without a thick coat, you’ll be confronted by the…

  • Switching memories on and off

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    Isabella
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    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…

  • Scanning the developing chromatome

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    Isabella
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    The DNA-binding region of (human) SUV39H1, a key chromatin regulator identified by the authors with ChAC-DIA. Image from SINO Biological. Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) exist in the embryo during early development and can develop into virtually any kind of cell in the body – pluripotent literally means “many-powered”. In the transition from early to late…

  • How it all started, and where we are now

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    Isabella
    in

    On the evolution of epigenetics, both as a field and as a term (and my first post!) A diagram of a developing human embryo from a 1916 textbook (image is in the public domain). The meaning of words changes over time. “Awful”, for instance, used to mean “impressive”. Now it means quite the opposite. “Epigenetics”…