Application Highlight
Epigenetics is the study of environmental stresses creating changes in gene expression that can be passed to offspring. These changes leave the underlying DNA sequence untouched but affect gene expression induced regulation (up or down), Resulting in a new phenotype. These environmentally induced changes can also be transient (and potentially) reversible – creating an extremely complex situation to study and understand. By better understanding how this process works, researchers hope on day to be able to use these mechanisms to selectively switch genes on or off. This is a new and exciting area of drug development that is being applied to many important disease areas.
The Collaboration
Seqll realizes that academic collaborations are critical to advancing our technology platform and to developing cutting edge applications that utilize our unique capabilities. Dan Jones, SeqLL’s founder and President, worked closely with long-time collaborators Brad Bernstein, MD, PhD, and Efrat Shema, PhD to adapt SeqLL technology to examine correlations between histone modifications and sequence of the associated DNA. This novel approach promises to open a new frontier of single molecule epigenetic, enabling researchers to answer questions about epigenetic control of gene expression at a level never before possible.
