My lab is focused in part on chromatin states in stem cells and cancer including heterochromatin. In fact, my lab’s website is chromatin.com. Heterochromatin is dense, often inactive chromatin. By H&E staining and electron microscopy, heterochromatin looks dark compared to the rest of the nucleus, largely composed of euchromatin. Toward the end of my postdoc […]
Weekly reads: heterochromatin, H3.3, Mesoblast bump Read More »
It’s another one of those ‘double-grant’ weekends of grant writing (on brain cancer) and reviewing, but I’m still trying to find a bit of time for some other reading. There was some important news this week including a big mess of problematic papers at Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). Recommended reads Here’s the new WaPo
Weekly stem cell reads: cancer paper mess at DFCI, H3.3, knees, surfer keeps on posting Read More »
It’s always exciting when your lab has a new paper and my team just published a study knocking out the H3f3a gene in mice, which codes for histone H3.3 protein. We found that loss of this gene leads to lethality at a late stage of embryonic development. There were also indications of more specific phenotypes
Weekly reads: H3.3 on the brain, Texas bill, HSCs Read More »
Happy New Year and get ready for another 364 more days of stem cell excitement and craziness in 2022. In the next day or two I’ll post my predictions for this new year. Recommended reads EO Wilson obit by Carl Zimmer in NYT. Who’s the next EO Wilson or someone like him with such big impact these
Weekly stem cell reads: COVID kidney, FDA letter, H3.3, EO Wilson Read More »
It has been fascinating in the last year to see the unfolding story of mutations in histone variant H3.3 in pediatric glioblastoma and related tumors. It seems amazing that in just over a year, a whole new area of cancer research has rapidly progressed. As I discussed in a recent post, histone H3.3 is a
Allis lab Science paper on histone H3.3 in pediatric brain cancer Read More »
A relatively newly recognized, important player in the stem cell field is a molecule called histone H3.3. Histones are key components of chromatin with integral roles in regulating almost all aspects of cell behavior through orchestrating functions such as transcription and chromosome segregation. Histone H3.3 knockout My lab has just (April 9) published new studies
Histone H3.3: giving cells epigenetic flexibility Read More »
Why are most brain cancers so difficult to treat leaving the unfortunate patients who suffer from them in dire circumstances so often? The short answer is that we don’t know why. This lack of understanding is like a wall standing between the cures and us for these patients. We have to climb or knockdown this
Brain cancer: why histones including H3.3 are so important Read More »
When a vendor of important reagents like antibody supplier Abcam charges big money, those high Abcam prices could negatively impact research in the long run. Some of the prices are so high that buying just a few antibodies could take up a small but meaningful slice of an entire R01 grant. Sky-high Abcam prices I’ve
Weekly reads: abundant Abcam prices, speedy aging & cancer, stemmy CAR-T, more on STAP Read More »
Some folks can view data from early, small clinical trials too skeptically or overly enthusiastically, and maybe that’s going on with some preliminary results from Verve Therapeutics. Good news? Bad news? I’m going to start with two articles about the same news that have very different vibes. What do I think? On the whole, I
Weekly reads: Verve Therapeutics, Casgevy UK OK, GDNF, MYC Read More »
Most of us have heard of organoids but what about the related model called an “assembloid”, which is a term growing in use including from organoid researcher Sergiu Pasca of Stanford? Before we jump into that, be sure to enter The Niche stem cell image contest for your chance to win $100 or some swag.