Well the Keystone meeting on Epigenetics and Chromatin Modeling in Development has wrapped, and the reaction from participants was very positive, indication that the epigenetics field -- which has broadened significantly to include much of the chromatin and transcriptional control community -- is set for some significant findings. Many told me that the selection of talks was the best they?d heard in years. ?I didn?t fall asleep during any of them,? said one meeting-goer as we waited for the... Click to continue

I didn?t want to give the impression from my last two posts that it?s all RNAi all the time at this year?s Keystone Symposium on Epigenetics and Chromatin Remodeling in Development. Polycomb group complex (PgC) proteins, their binding sites, and/or how they set up silencing states in development has been a feature in practically every other talk or poster, here. Not simply a 60-year old vagary of Drosophila development that gave rise to wacky phenotypes, PgCs deserve more respect says... Click to continue

Repeats appear important in gene silencing. Repeats appear important in gene silencing. At least two talks at the Keystone Symposium Conference on Epigenetics and Chromatin Remodeling in Development implicate the power of tandem repeats in RNA-interference induced silencing. Rob Martienssen of Cold Spring Harbor talked about silencing of transposable elements (in keeping with the grand history of his institution). He explained how his lab has found that RNAi-independent and RNAi-dependent... Click to continue

A funny thing happened to the Keystone symposium on epigenetics and development, apparently a few years back it got invaded by chromatin people. At my first day at the symposium, I uncovered just a little grumbling that the histone modifications that control the winding and packing of DNA and that ultimately grant or restrict access to transcriptional machinery don?t quite qualify as epigenetic marks. The players in the field have yet to demonstrate that they are heritable said Ueli... Click to continue

Rice University physicist Neal Lane penned an interesting op-ed in the Houston Chronicle today. On the occasion of Benjamin Franklin?s 300th birthday, Lane asks (and takes a stab at answering) the question, what would Ben make of this whole intelligent design hubbub While unquestionably a man of God, Franklin reveled in science. Lane writes that Franklin would most certainly have cut any purported ID theorist a... Click to continue

I received an Email advertising the new journal Autophagy today. In a list of features about the journal, the Email adds:

?We also point out that we have an expedited review process if your paper was rejected from a ?flashy? journal; we all know that even solid papers do not always get accepted into the top general audience journals.?

The policy is expanded on a bit in their ... Click to continue

I was grateful for the invitation to witness the return to Earth of NASA?s Stardust mission broadcast live from the American Museum of Natural History this Sunday. While the notion of roaming the halls of a favorite childhood retreat at 5am is appealing, I?m even more enthralled by the possibilities of Stardust, an unmanned spacecraft which captured particles from the comet Wild 2 offering the possibility of a glimpse into the very birth of... Click to continue