M
November 28, 2011 Many of the cornerstone techniques for epigenetic analysis have become so common, and often used that it’s easy to think that there isn’t much room left for improvement. But as a few articles that we’ve seen in just the last week or so show, not everyone is satisfied with protocols that are just “good enough”. Check out these examples of researchers that decided to spruce up a popular method. Maybe you’ll even be inspired to make a few new tweaks of your own.
The Matrix ChIP-MeDIP platform boasts the capacity of to profile several different genomic events simultaneously in cultured cells or whole tissues. Because of this, Matrix ChIP-MeDIP can complement genome-wide studies of DNA methylation, chromatin and transcriptional regulators to uncover mechanistic, functional and diagnostic details of target genes for health and disease research.
BMC Molecular Biology, November 2011.
miFee takes miRNA target prediction to the next step by integrating two parts: a sensitive Ab-Initio module and selective machine learning algorithm that recognizes false positives. This combination leads to a nice balance between sensitivity and specificity. The miREE tool can be found online at http://didattica-online.polito.it/eda/miREE/
BMC Bioinformatics, November 2011.
Through the combination of genome-wide data for transcription factor binding sites and chromatin structure, this new approach can ID chromatin marks that indicate transcription factor associations to various regulatory elements. The author’s tests show that just a handful of selected transcription factors may be enough to map most regulatory elements in the human genome.
BMC Biology, November 2011.
» All Features