Connection Between Epigenome, Selective Mutability, Evolution, and Human Disease
Li, Harris et al., PLoS Genetics
Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine and elsewhere propose a "connection between the epigenome, selective mutability, evolution, and human disease" based on the findings of their study on associations of structural mutability with germline DNA methylation and with non-allelic homologous recombination mediated by low-copy repeats. "Combined evidence from four human sperm methylome maps, human genome evolution, structural polymorphisms in the human population, and previous genomic and disease studies consistently points to a strong association of germline hypomethylation and genomic instability," the Baylor-led team writes.
Nature Gets in the Open Access Game
There's a new journal from Nature coming out. Scientific Reports will be an online, open-access journal with articles covering the natural sciences, according to a Nature press release. "Scientific Reports exists to facilitate the rapid peer review and publication of research that is of interest to specialists within any given field in the natural sciences, without barriers to access," says the description on the journal's homepage. Jonathan Eisen notes the new journal on his blog, saying that it "sounds remarkably like PLoS One, even though they do not mention PLoS One in the announcement. Good news all around I think — the more OA we have out there the better." Scientific Reports is accepting manuscripts now and plans to publish its first papers during the summer.