Do you understand this Nature paper on transcription factor binding in different mouse strains?

I've published a few papers on the regulation of transcription of a mouse gene and students in my lab have done the standard promoter-bashing experiment to define transcription factor binding sites. I did ny Ph.D. in a lab that specialized in DNA binding proteins. I've kept up with the basic ideas in eukaryotic gene expression in order to teach undergraduate courses on that topic and in order to write appropriate information in my textbook.

I've been interested in genome organization for several decades and I've been following the literature on pervasive transcription and transcription factor binding in whole genome studies. I'm reasonably familiar with the techniques although I've never done them myself.

I'm not bragging; I'm just saying that I know a little bit about this stuff so when I saw this paper in one of the latest issues of Nature I decided to look more carefully.

Heinz, S., Romanoski, C., Benner, C., Allison, K., Kaikkonen, M., Orozco, L. and Glass, C. (2013) Effect of natural genetic variation on enhancer selection and function. Nature 503:487-492. [doi: 10.1038/nature12615]

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Stina Rapp - System Magazine - Autumn/Winter 2013

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Hair: Tomohiro Ohashi
Makeup: Aude Gill

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Stylist: Marie Chaix

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Stylist: Naomi Miller
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Jason Rosenhouse read Chris Mooney's article on 7 Reasons Why It's Easier for Humans to Believe in God Than Evolution and liked it. Mooney was arguing that it's easier to believe in god(s) than in evolution because our evolutionary history selected for traits that predisposed us to think more like IDiots than like scientists.

I disagreed [Why don't people accept evolution? ]. Here's what I wrote last week ....
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Stylist: Michelle Duguid

Hair: Lyndell Mansfield

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