Archive by category | Research Highlights

[Research highlight] Transcription in action

In a work just published at Nature, Churchman and Weissman (2011) describe a new method for directly capturing and sequencing elongating, or nascent, RNA transcripts. The authors then use this method to provide a detailed look at the transcriptional process in action, revealing a histone modification-dependent mechanism that constrains genome-wide antisense transcription, and pervasive transcriptional pausing and backtracking throughout genes.  Read more

[Research highlight] modENCODE releases extensive functional investigation of fly and worm genomes

Recently, a series of publications by members of the modENCODE consortium were released online at Science, Nature, and Genome Research. These works collectively describe a massive effort to functionally characterize and annotate the Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans genomes, including in-depth analyses of genes and transcripts, epigenetic marks, transcription factor binding, and replication timing, across a range of developmental and tissue sources.  Read more