Are methylation patterns linked to genetic ancestry? Esteban Burchard at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues published an analysis of epigenomic information gleaned from 573 Latin American study participants in eLife on January 3.
“There are a number of studies now trying to separate out the effects of genomic ancestry and what we call social race and ethnicity,” said Dalton Conley of Princeton University in New Jersey, who was not involved in the study. “This is among the first such epigenomic studies.”
Tinkering with a single microRNA, miR-34a, Lin He at the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues manipulated murine embryonic stem cells into becoming extra-embryonic cell types. This miRNA-linked effect is in part mediated by the expression of an endogenous retrovirus, the researchers reported this week (January 12) in Science.
Researchers at University College London have established a link between binge drinking–induced overeating and agouti-related protein (AgRP) ...
