Questions tagged [epigenetics]
Mechanisms for inheriting phenotype outside of the genomic DNA sequence.
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Searching for reference regarding the impact of famine on a woman's grandchildren
I was once told that if a woman experiences a famine, her grandchildren will show epigenetic changes because the egg that the intervening mother came from also experienced the famine.
In other words, ...
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How long does it take for a gene to be switched on or off through the process of epigenetic expression?
I understand that in our lifetime, our experiences affect the expression of our genes. Some get switched on, while others switched off. Our experiences, diet, lifestyle etc. determines this expression ...
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Variance in epigenetic drift rate between different species
My question relates to the prospect of (near?) future control of biological aging.
As I understand, it has been recently demonstrated by Prof. David Sinclair's group that epigenetic drift appears to ...
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What is the expected result when using Sanger Sequencing for Bisulfite analysis on an unmethylated CpG?
Hello fellow molecular biologists!
I'm currently starting out doing a lot of Bisulfite Sequencing and as COBRA is not sufficiently working on my sequence, I do Sanger Sequencing instead, as suggested ...
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Maternal Effects
Does anyone know of a good review of non-human maternal effects, preferably the most recent? I'm looking for a breakdown of the most well-studied/least studied biotic and abiotic cues. Perhaps ...
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Genetic modifications to produce blue hair
The following animals are known to produce blue pigmentation:
Linckia laevigata (blue star, study reveals blue carotenoprotein, linkiacyanin)
Nessaea batesii (obrina olivewing, study reveals blue ...
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How do genetic variants of a gene moderate an association, leading to counterintuitive result?
I have run moderation analysis to study the interaction between SNP (dominant model) of a gene (A) with DNA methylation on cognition measures. For this, I have calculated the mean DNA methylation ...
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Can the SAME histone tail have both H3K4me3 and H3K27me3?
I'm studying bivalent promoters and enhancers. I understand that the same region of genome can have both H3K4me3 and H3K27me3.
But can they occur on the same histone tail?
Please provide me with a ...
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Where in the cell does this enhancer RNA knockdown take place?
In Pnueli et al., 2015, they knock down an enhancer RNA using RNAi, testing whether it is a mere byproduct or whether it has a key role in the enhancer's function. They find their system works: the ...
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What’s so remarkable about position effect variegation?
I am reading Albert et. al’s Molecular Biology of the Cell and at one point the authors discuss the idea of “position effect variegation.” They mention that through events of DNA relocation, it’s ...
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Epigenetic marks
I was lately researching epigenetics and the current research on age reversal. Because epigenetic processes are influenced by the environment and can vary over time, I wanted to know if all epigenetic ...
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Gene regulation and epigenetics in specialized cells
Gene regulation is aided by epigenetics. Epigenetics determines which genes are turned off and which are switched on, and it varies throughout our lifetimes. Is it feasible that epigenetic ...
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Do stem cells have no epigenome?
Till now I thought that embryonic stem cells have no epigenome as they are pluripotent. (I thought that since epigenome is what gives a cell its identity, no cellular identity means no epigenome) I ...
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Does parental conflict lead to genes combining important functions with functions only advantageous for one of the parents?
In a sitation of a mother-father conflict of interests, the mother might use epigenetics to turn off some genes only advantageous for the father's genes and not her own. I thought a logical father's ...
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Are there epigenetic effects in the regulation of human height?
Development of human average height
Human average height has fluctuated significantly throughout history. For instance, in the last 100 years or so, it has increased sharply by about 10cm. OWID (Our ...
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Evidence against aging caused by loss of information in genome and epigenome in humans?
After reading Lifespan by David Sinclair I'm curious if there is any evidence against aging being caused by loss of information in genome and epigenome of 3.7*1013 cells in human body.
Specifically ...
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Why do I get cytosine to guanine/adenine transitions in bisulphite treated sequences?
I got my sequencing results (bisulphite treated and non treated sequences of same species Allium cepa) and now I have to do analysis in Cymate online tool. I prepared all sequences as it is written in ...
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Role of epigenetics in evolution and transmission of defects caused by drugs
In a documentary, they were saying that epigenetics changes caused by the environment in an individual can be transferred to the following generations. I have some questions on that:
How many ...
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How can we determine which chromosome came from which parent? [closed]
In this article there is a graph (figure 1) describing different levels of methylation in the maternal and paternal chromosomes after karyogamy.
How can the researchers identify which chromosome ...
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Tree-pest coevolution
Many trees first reproduce decades after germination. Many pests of trees reproduce in under a year. It would seem that the pests have an advantage in the evolutionary arms-race, as they can evolve ...
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Can untargeted metabolomics detect epigenomic changes such as methylation?
My main focus is transcriptomics analysis and very recently I have also started working on metabolomics. From my transcriptomic data it looks like there is a gene/protein that could potentially ...
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Has lamarckism been discredited? [duplicate]
Lamarckism is a pre-darwinian theory according to which an organism's traits acquired to adapt to the environment are passed onto its offspring. A couple of years ago, I attended an event with Richard ...
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DNA methylation and the validity of the definition of epigenetics
I am currently studying a textbook that presents the following definition of epigenetics:
Epigenetics is defined as heritable changes in gene expression without changes in the DNA sequence.
The ...
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Can epigenetics have positive impact on the genes are development?
I know that epigenetics have capacity to affect and degrade the genes thereby inducing problems/illness/degradation in body functions.
Can they also make better genes or have positive impact on ...
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Single-cell ATAC seq arrays
As part of a data analysis project, I encountered two kinds of single-cell assays
for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing (single-cell ATAC seq) methods. The first uses combinatorial ...
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Studying the epigenetic variability, can I use SNPs?
So, I'm trying to study the effects of epigenetic variability on the brain structure. Can I use SNPs associated with a gene's higher expression to compute the likelihood of that gene being expressed ...
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what causes epigenetic dysregulation in cancer?
Do mutations in regulatory gene sequences lead to changes in epigenetic alterations in cancer, and if so which ones? I know abnormal hypermethylation of GCP islands occurs in promoters of tumour ...
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Are epigenetic modifications the most stable mechanisms for cell differentiation?
Wondering what the general take is on what are the molecular mechanisms that are mostly responsible for cell type differentiation stability; ie, for a cell's identity to actually become 'locked in' ...
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Is it possible to change the DNA of all the cells of an adult human [closed]
The process of making and transferring changes is pretty straightforward relatively speaking in an embroyo. You change the DNA of one cell and all the cells now inherit this change.
But let's say ...
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Is there natural occurrence of induced pluripotency / expression of Yamanaka factors and what is the evolutionary explanation of that?
Is there natural biological processes in which the full (full reprogramming into pluripotent state) or partial (partial reprogramming, stopped before point-of-no-return, preserving the functional ...
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Techniques of molecular medicine/biology for aesthetic medicine?
Are there scientifically valid methods (possibly in the developmental stage) that can be used for aesthetic medicine. Usually surgical of physical therapies are used for aesthetic medicine, but ...
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why nucleosome spacing is longer in heterochromatin than euchromatin
Heterochromatin is defined as tightly packed form of DNA. But some experiments show that the average spacing of nucleosomes associated with H3K9me3 and H3K27me3, both heterochromatin marks, are longer ...
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Do epigenetics determine the proteins a cell produces and therefore it's function?
I'm having trouble understanding what epigenetics is in a simple sense.
How I imagine it is that if we had 2 twins with identical DNA and we let them live we will see that they'll develop differently....
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Is there any example of genetic mechanism of delayed onset toxic effects?
We know that exposure to many toxic chemicals during embryonic development may show toxic effects later in life. It is called Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHAD). Most of the ...
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Semantics Question: epigenetic mark on a person's DNA?
In an article on biomarkers of child abuse, the author referred to an "epigenetic mark on a person's DNA". It's a popular science article, so the language may reflect a combination of the journalist's ...
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Can supplements affect DNA? (Could 10,000% Methylcobalamin affect MTHFR genotype)
Originally titled "Could B12 supplementation affect dna test results for B12 need?" - B12 just seems like a good example question to frame the more general question of "Can supplements affect DNA?"
I ...
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What is the relationship between induction of cell differentiation and DNA methylation status?
This may sound like a broad question to ask, but I am working on interpreting a review article for my epigenetics course and I'm having trouble reconciling two seemingly contradictory things this ...
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epigenetic vs. environmental factors
I'm trying to understand the difference between epigenetic and environmental factors. For example, if gene A increases the risk of lung cancer by 50% and smoking increases the risk by another 75% when ...
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How can epigenetic changes be erased if they are inherited?
I’m a little bit confused about DNA methlyation reprogramming and about the nature of an epigenetic phenomenon. According to Wikipedia:
After fertilization the paternal and maternal genomes are ...
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"50% of the variance in antisocial phenotypes is the result of genetic factors" means what?
How can i understand the following sentence:
Overall, the conclusions reached by these studies have been highly consistent in showing that approximately 50% of the variance in antisocial phenotypes ...
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How do cells become differentiated using epigenetics despite having the same genome?
How is epigenetics used in the differentiation of cells and is this the only thing that is used? I've seen that transcription factors play a role but are these simply proteins that initially write the ...
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DNA methylation in different positions
I'm trying to understand how does DNA methylation and histone methylation status of promoters differs given their position in a gene? Does position affect whether they are repressive or activating?
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Is protein production doubled if you have homozygous dominant genes as opposed to heterozygous genes?
At school we were taught in quite simplistic terms. We were told that there is a dominant and recessive type of every gene and that if the dominant gene was present, the protein is produced and if it ...
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Is there any biological basis for the emphasis on the value of the firstborn son?
Is the firstborn son biologically different in any way from the sons that follow?
Perhaps his epigenome is different? I have heard that a man's testosterone levels decrease when he becomes a father --...
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Have researchers discovered how epigenetic information is passed down during cell division?
For example, how are histone code patterns passed down?
This question was asked a few years ago in this thread:
How are epigenetic marks transmitted during cell division?
However, it has been a few ...
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On parents' similarity
I don't know if this is a real claim, I live in Mexico City and most of the people I know are more similar to their father than to their mother? Why is that? Are the x and y cromosomes somehow related ...
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Is there any technique can quickly expand one set of cell chromosomes?
Assume a cell type is very scarce while isolated out and hard to expand in vitro, and I wanna have more of its chromosomes, is there any technique , in vivo or in vitro or ex vitro, any would count, ...
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How does CpG island methylation lead to gene silencing?
I see often the blanket statement that CpG island methylation can lead to gene silencing. However, I have been unable to find a straightforward explanation of the mechanism by this.
Is it a purely ...
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Can epigenetic structures carry a trait?
Can epigenetic structures cause a trait to manifest in a person if the trait is not already in the DNA? In all my readings I have yet to find a definitive statement that it is impossible.
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Can genetic material actually provide a physical description of appearance?
A bodies genetic material provides the blueprint for your appearance. Your predisposition to be tall, freckled, blue eyed and blonde are encoded from birth.
However, external and environmental factors ...
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