Category Archives: gene regulation

The Imprinter of All Maladies

Any sufficiently convoluted explanation for biological phenomena is indistinguishable from epigenetics. Epigenetics is everywhere. Nary a day goes by without some news story or press release telling us something it explains. Why does autism run in families?  Epigenetics. Why do you have trouble losing weight? Epigenetics. Why are vaccines dangerous? Epigenetics. Why is cancer so hard to fight? Epigenetics. Why […]

Also posted in epigenetics, My lab, science | Comments closed

Please review our new paper: Sequencing mRNA from cryo-sliced Drosophila embryos to determine genome-wide spatial patterns of gene expression

It’s no secret to people who read this blog that I hate the way scientific publishing works today. Most of my efforts in this domain have focused on removing barriers to the access and reuse of published papers. But there are other things that are broken with the way scientists communicate with each other, and […]

Also posted in EisenLab, My lab, open access, science | Comments closed

A neutral theory of molecular function

In 1968 Motoo Kimura published a short article in Nature in which he argued that “most mutations produced by nucleotide replacement are almost neutral in natural selection”. This fantastic paper is generally viewed as having established the “neutral theory” of molecular evolution, whose central principle was set out by Jack King and Lester Jukes in a Science paper the […]

Also posted in ENCODE, evolution, genetics, NOT junk, science | Comments closed

Zelda (the coolest transcription factor ever) is a master regulator of embryonic adolescence

PLoS Genetics just published a paper from my lab describing our analysis of the binding and activity of a remarkable protein, known as Zelda, that appears to be a master regulator of genome activation in the earliest stages of Drosophila development, and thereby plays a major role in shaping the form and function of the mature […]

Also posted in cool science, evolution, genetics, My lab, science | Comments closed

Regulatin’ Genes

Via John Tierney, this video about development is awesome:

Also posted in cool science, evolution | Comments closed