PIXABAY, PUBLICDOMAINPICTURESMembers of the Roadmap Epigenome Consortium this week (February 18) published their analysis of 111 human epigenomes in Nature. Their publication was accompanied by a slew of other epigenome analyses, including those related to cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
These achievements in epigenome mapping are “definitely a milestone,” said Kristian Helin of the University of Copenhagen who was not involved in the research. “It should mostly be credited for the enormous amount of work . . . that hopefully will serve as a very good guide for epigenome studies in the future.”
“At times, we need a control or reference, a baseline, and now we can just go here and download this data, and use that as a baseline for our experiments, and that’s important,” added Manel Esteller of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute in Spain who was not involved in the study.
WIKIMEDIA, ALLEN INSTITUTE FOR BRAIN SCIENCEDuring feeding, pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons typically signal satiety. But exposure to cannabinoids can lead to the opposite effect, according to a mouse study published in Nature this week (February 18).
