Moonwalking the methylation 🧬 When you expose an adult differentiated cell to the OSKM Yamanaka factors, it reverts to a stem cell (an induced pluripotent stem cell). That takes 16 days. But in the early days, it becomes a younger but differentiated cell, an exciting end state we want to better understand and ideally reliably induce for regenerative medicine and longevity. Loss of cell identity occurs late in the cycle. The process of transformation is a reprogramming of the software of the cell, the methylation side chains to our DNA that modulate gene expression.  This is epigenetic reprogramming, and we have recently developed tools to read and write the epigenetic software layer of our cells (much like sequencing and CRISPR did for our genetic firmware). At the recent Cold Spring Harbor Cell Fate Conversions conference, Moonwalk Bio and UCLA presented some novel discoveries of the mechanics of this transformation — a localized zipping and unzipping along the genome at 24K locations.  The company used nanopore sequencing to do daily long reads (10’s of kB) across the entire genome of human fibroblast cells transforming to stem cells. They made a novel discovery of a pattern of zipping and unzipping of the methylated regions along the genome, outward from a number of initial focal points. The demethylation unzipping starts earlier in 15K regions, and the methylation zipping comes later in the stem cell transformation cycle in 8.8K regions.  These dynamics of epigenetic programming transform the cell through rejuvenation to a loss of cell identity (universal stem cell conversion). What is happening? Is the mechanism of action caused by the linear march of enzymes?  Or does transcription factor binding, starting with OSKM, unwrap the chromatin in these regions? Which regions are potentially causal for loss of cell identity vs rejuvenation? Moonwalk is currently working on better understanding the drivers of this exciting discovery. Moonwalk.bio

This new data will identify new molecular mechanisms driving metabolic diseases and highlight the potential of precision epigenetic tools like EpiRead™ and EpiWrite™ for drug discovery in obesity and liver disease. businesswire.com/news/home/2…

Moonwalk Biosciences is excited to announce that John Liles has joined as VP of Biology and Translational Science, and it has assembled a world class cardiometabolic advisory board! businesswire.com/news/home/2…

ASGCT 2024: Moonwalk Biosciences Presents Multiplex Epigenetic Engineering Platform genengnews.com/topics/drug-d… via @GENbio We will be at ASGCT in Baltimore next week to present more about our epigenetic engineering platform; please visit us during our poster session!

Moonwalk Biosciences to Present Data Showcasing EpiRead™ and EpiWrite™ Next-Generation Multiplex Epigenetic Engineering Platform at ASGCT 2024 - businesswire.com/news/home/2…