@arpitrage Agree and surprised to hear there is not usually such an office! At @WesternU we had this, by Faculty. Not everyone knew about it (or always used them), but they did an excellent job in my experience (at least in @westernuScience).
@GallowayLabMIT Bit out of my area, but I recall hearing this too. FWIW, I think it's often more complex than just longer vs. shorter, and it seems to often involve cis-acting elements.
I suspect the original notion came from here:
https://t.co/WZeS2agtBW
Some later related work follows:
Expanded DNA alphabet for gene regulation🧬
Beyond A/C/G/T, a study by @cobyviner and collaborators, led by @michaelhoffman@UHN, added symbols like “m” and “h” to the genetic alphabet as a new way to study epigenetic regulation.
>>https://t.co/YqAfQHijSz
@311Toronto I went to some effort to submit this, only to find it Cancelled earlier today. No explanation was offered without my having to call in. Any chance you might be able to just let me know here. Is this because a work order for this was already enqueued?
17/This methodology gives us evidence of the epigenetic modification state of the DNA that is actually bound to OCT4. And, as it turns out, OCT4 motifs are indeed preferentially bound when the sequence is hydroxymethylated!
13/For OCT4, our expanded alphabet analysis revealed a potential preference for 5-hydroxymethylcytosine. Unlike some of the other preferences described above, we could not find this described in the literature.