The possibility of providing investigative leads when conventional DNA identification methods fail to solve a case can be of extreme relevance to law enforcement. Therefore, the forensic genetics community has focused research towards the broadened use of DNA, particularly for prediction of appearance traits, bio-geographical ancestry and age. The VISible Attributes through GEnomics (VISAGE) Consortium expanded the use of DNA phenotyping by developing new molecular and statistical tools for appearance, age and ancestry prediction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMassively Parallel Sequencing (MPS) applied to forensic genetics allows the simultaneous analysis of hundreds of genetic markers and the access to full amplicon sequences which help to increase available allele diversity. Meanwhile, sequence variation within the repeat regions represents the majority of the allele diversity, flanking regions adjacent to the repeat core provide an additional degree of variation. The forensic genetics community needs access to population data, from relevant parts of the world that contain this new sequence diversity in order to perform statistical calculations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChromatin Immunoprecipitation coupled either to qPCR (qChIP) or high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-Seq) has been extensively used in the last decades to identify the DNA binding sites of transcription factors or the localization of various histone marks along the genome. The ChIP experiment generally includes 7 steps: collection of biological samples (A), cross-linking proteins to DNA (B), chromatin isolation and fragmentation by sonication (C), sonication test (D), immunoprecipitation with antibodies against the protein or the histone mark of interest (E), DNA recovery (E), identification of factor-associated DNA sequences by PCR or sequencing (F). The protocol described here can readily be used for ChIP-seq and ChIP-qPCR experiments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolycomb group proteins form two main complexes, PRC2 and PRC1, which generally coregulate their target genes. Here we show that PRC1 components act as neoplastic tumor suppressors independently of PRC2 function. By mapping the distribution of PRC1 components and trimethylation of histone H3 at Lys27 (H3K27me3) across the genome, we identify a large set of genes that acquire PRC1 in the absence of H3K27me3 in Drosophila larval tissues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Opin Cell Biol
June 2012
Polycomb group proteins are important transcriptional repressors in developmental control, both stably silencing genes out of their appropriate lineage, and conferring dynamic regulation of genes whose expression changes in response to developmental cues. Polycomb is a key organizer of the linear epigenome, forming distinct chromatin domains of associated histone modifications, and fine-tuning the activities of genetic elements. Polycomb also modulates three-dimensional genome architecture by the formation of regulatory chromatin loops and coalescing target genes at discrete nuclear foci.
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