In Nature Genetics this week, an international group of scientists reports on its identification of five new susceptibility loci for cutaneous malignant melanoma from a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies. The newly associated SNPs fall within putative melanocyte regulatory elements, and bioinformatic and expression quantitative trait locus data highlighted candidate genes in the associated regions. GenomeWeb has more on this study here.
And in Nature Methods, researchers from the University of Rochester and the University of California, Santa Cruz, describe a new technique for detecting methyl-modified RNAs when using high-throughput RNA sequencing. Called AlkB-facilitated RNA methylation sequencing, or ARM-seq, the approach involves treating RNA with a dealkylating enzyme before reverse transcription in library preparation. The scientists demonstrated ARM-seq in analyses of budding yeast and human cell lines, and suggest that it has broad utility for identifying previously overlooked methyl-modified RNAs.