癌症DNA甲基化调控位点的识别

DNA甲基化是一种重要的表观遗传学修饰,在基因的转录调控方面具有重要的作用。异常的DNA甲基化可以导致癌症等复杂疾病发生,癌基因相关的DNA甲基化调控位点的识别对于解析癌症的发生发展机制及识别新的癌症标记具有重要意义。本研究通过整合The Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA)的泛癌症基因组的高通量甲基化谱和基因表达谱,识别癌基因相关的DNA甲基化调控位点。对于每种癌症分批次计算Cp G位点甲基化与相关基因表达之间的相关性,并筛选调控下游基因的Cp G位点(包括强调控位点、弱调控位点和不调控位点),结果表明仅有一半的Cp G位点对下游基因具有调控作用;对癌症间共享的调控位点的分析发现不同癌症间共享的调控位点不尽相同,表明癌症特异的甲基化调控位点的存在。进一步地,对差异甲基化和差异表达基因的功能富集分析揭示了受甲基化调控的基因确实参与了癌症发生发展相关的功能。本研究的结果是对当前甲基化调控位点集的重要补充,也是识别癌症新型分子标记特征的重要资源。     

DNA甲基化与癌症

DNA甲基化是重要的表观遗传修饰,主要发生在DNA的CpG岛. DNA的甲基化通过DNA甲基转移酶（DNA methyltransferases, DNMTs）完成. DNA甲基化参与了细胞分化、基因组稳定性、X染色体失活、基因印记等多种细胞生物学过程.单基因水平及基因组范围内的DNA甲基化改变在肿瘤发生发展中亦发挥重要作用. 抑癌基因的异常甲基化引起的表达抑制,可导致肿瘤细胞的增殖失控和侵袭转移,并参与肿瘤组织的血管生成过程.在许多肿瘤的研究中都发现了基因组整体DNA低甲基化所导致的染色体不稳定性. 本文从DNA的异常高甲基化和低甲基化两方面论述了DNA甲基化在细胞恶变发生发展过程中的改变及其影响,并阐述了DNA甲基化改变在肿瘤诊断和治疗中的作用.     

DNA甲基化与基因表达调控研究进展

表观遗传修饰是指不改变DNA序列的、可遗传的对碱基和组蛋白的化学修饰,主要包括DNA甲基化、组蛋白修饰、染色质重塑以及非编码RNA等.表观遗传修饰是更高层次的基因表达调控手段.DNA甲基化是一种重要的表观遗传修饰,参与基因表达调控、基因印记、转座子沉默、X染色体失活以及癌症发生等重要生物学过程.近年来随着研究方法和技术的进步,全基因组DNA甲基化的研究广泛兴起,多个物种全基因组甲基化图谱被破译,全局水平对DNA甲基化的研究不仅利于在宏观层面上了解DNA甲基化的特性与规律,同时也为深入分析DNA甲基化的生物学功能与调控奠定了基础.结合最新研究进展综述DNA甲基化在基因组中的分布模式、规律以及和基因转录的关系等.     

DNA甲基化/去甲基化与疾病概览

DNA甲基化(5m C)状态与疾病的发生发展密切相关,异常甲基化状态是肿瘤的重要特征,包括基因组整体甲基化水平降低和Cp G岛局部甲基化程度的异常升高。近期研究还发现,DNA甲基化可以继续氧化为DNA羟甲基化(5hm C),而5hm C可能是一种新的表观修饰或者参与DNA去甲基化。随着DNA甲基化测序技术的发展,可以得到全基因组单碱基分辨率的5m C和5hm C图谱,深入研究5m C和5hm C的动态变化对发育和肿瘤的影响,并期望找到潜在应用于肿瘤诊断和治疗的表观标志物。该文主要总结了DNA甲基化/去甲基化及其在肿瘤发生发展过程中的动态变化、潜在的表观标志物以及检测和治疗研究进展。     

玉米MuDR转座子DNA甲基化的MSP检测

DNA甲基化作为一种重要的表观遗传修饰,广泛存在于高等动植物中,并在维持基因组稳定性、调节基因表达等方面起着重要作用,因此建立快速有效地DNA甲基化检测技术至关重要.本文以两种不同MuDR活性的玉米转座子材料为研究对象, 探讨了甲基化特异性PCR(MSP)在检测DNA甲基化的有效性.结果表明: MSP技术可快速有效地检测MuDR转座子的末端反向重复(TIRs)序列内的CpG岛DNA甲基化的变化,灵敏度高,特异性强,可作为植物已知基因DNA甲基化检测的一种新方法.同时利用MSP研究发现,玉米MuDR转座子的活性随其TIRs序列内的CpG岛DNA甲基化的变化而改变, DNA甲基化是调控玉米MuDR转座活性的重要分子机制之一.     

人肝细胞中FⅧ基因5'端CpG岛甲基化状态的研究

本实验通过建立稳定的重亚硫酸盐测序(bisulfite-sequencing PCR,BSP)检测平台,研究人类永生化肝细胞LO2与人肝组织细胞中凝血因子Ⅷ(coagulation factorⅧ,FⅧ)基因5'端Cp G岛的甲基化状态及该Cp G岛的甲基化在FⅧ表达调节中的作用。运用RT-PCR、Western-blot检测FⅧ在LO2细胞与人肝组织中的转录及表达,Methprimer软件预测FⅧ基因5'端Cp G岛并设计BSP引物,BSP联合TA克隆及质粒PCR各验证十个阳性单克隆送测序,QUMA软件对测序结果进行甲基化位点分析,以(甲基化CG位点个数)/(甲基化CG位点个数+非甲基化位点个数)计算甲基化率。结果显示,新鲜分离的人肝组织细胞能够稳定表达FⅧ,LO2细胞不能表达;FⅧ基因5'端存在一个278 bp的Cp G岛,LO2细胞中该Cp G岛的甲基化率为93.48%,正常人肝组织中该Cp G岛的甲基化率为93.91%。本实验成功建立稳定的BSP检测平台,并发现在LO2细胞与人肝组织中,FⅧ基因5'端均存在一个被高度甲基化的Cp G岛,人肝组织中FⅧ基因5'端Cp G岛的甲基化可能参与维持体内FⅧ的低水平表达。     

一种快速高效的全基因组甲基化CpG岛富集方法的建立

高甲基化的CpG岛所致基因表观遗传学转录失活已经成为肿瘤表观基因组学研究的重要内容。现在已有很多检测CpG岛甲基化的方法,但由于各自的局限,还没有建立一种能快速在全基因组水平上进行甲基化CpG岛的富集方法。本研究利用甲基化结合蛋白MBD2b具有特异性结合甲基化DNA的特性, 建立了一种基于DNA免疫共沉淀技术的全基因组甲基化CpG岛的富集方法。在大肠杆菌中表达重组的GST-MBD2b蛋白,通过Glutathione Sepharose 4B对重组蛋白进行纯化,制备成亲和层析柱,利用在不同的盐离子强度下甲基化DNA和非甲基化DNA的结合能力不同,对甲基化DNA进行富集。用甲基化酶SssI处理过的DNA片段与非甲基化DNA片段进行富集效率的检测,发现0.5M KCl的浓度是甲基化DNA片段和非甲基化DNA片段得以分开的临界条件。样品的富集效率用Real Time PCR进行检测。结果表明,这种方法能够实现对全基因组甲基化DNA的有效富集且最高的富集倍数可达到100多倍。富集到的甲基化DNA可以进行后续的定量PCR, DNA测序和全基因组芯片的分析等工作,为大规模分析全基因组CpG 岛甲基化的改变奠定了基础。     

离散增量结合二次判别分析预测人类DNA甲基化位点

DNA甲基化作为直接作用于DNA序列的一种表观遗传修饰,能够在不改变DNA分子一级结构的情况下影响基因表达,在生命活动中扮演着重要的角色.在哺乳动物中,DNA甲基化主要发生在C_pG二核苷酸的胞嘧啶上,并且在基因组中呈现不均匀分布.准确预测DNA甲基化位点有助于阐明DNA甲基化对基因表达的调控作用,并为肿瘤的早期诊断及治疗提供新的依据.本文应用离散增量结合二次判别分析的方法,对人类的C_pG二核苷酸甲基化状态进行了识别.5折交叉检验的整体准确率超过了80%,受试者操作特性曲线面积也达到了0.86.与现有方法相比,预测成功率显著提高.这说明离散增量结合二次判别分析方法适用于甲基化位点的预测;基因组序列中甲基化位点具有序列依赖性.     

乳腺癌相关基因的DNA甲基化

乳腺癌是女性最常见的恶性肿瘤之一。DNA甲基化作为哺乳动物细胞基因组修饰和表达调控的表观遗传学方式,在肿瘤的发生发展过程中总体水平降低,但同时又伴随某些基因的高甲基化。在乳腺癌中,多种关键基因的表达缺失都与其CpG岛高甲基化有关。     

DNA甲基化的生物信息学研究进展

作为重要的表观遗传学现象之一,DNA甲基化对基因的表达发挥重要的调控功能．随着高通量检测技术的不断发展,对DNA甲基化的生物信息学研究也成为DNA甲基化研究中的一个非常活跃的热点．对生物信息学在DNA甲基化状态的预测、CpG岛不易被甲基化的机制研究、探索DNA甲基化同其他表观遗传学现象之间的关系以及DNA异常甲基化同癌症的发生和发展之间的关系等方面的研究进展进行综述．     

Histone methylation marks play important roles in predicting the methylation status of CpG islands

The methylation status of CpG islands is highly correlated with gene expression. Current methods for computational prediction of DNA methylation only utilize DNA sequence features. In this study, besides 35 DNA sequence features, we added four histone methylation marks to predict the methylation status of CpG islands, and improved the accuracy to 89.94%. Also we applied our model to predict the methylation pattern of all the CpG islands in the human genome, and the results are consistent with the previous reports. Our results imply the important roles of histone methylation marks in affecting the methylation status of CpG islands. H3K4me enriched in the methylation-resistant CpG islands could disrupt the contacts between nucleosomes, unravel chromatin and make DNA sequences accessible. And the established open environment may be a prerequisite for or a consequence of the function implementation of zinc finger proteins that could protect CpG islands from DNA methylation.     

CpG island methylation in human lymphocytes is highly correlated with DNA sequence, repeats, and predicted DNA structure

CpG island methylation plays an important role in epigenetic gene control during mammalian development and is frequently altered in disease situations such as cancer. The majority of CpG islands is normally unmethylated, but a sizeable fraction is prone to become methylated in various cell types and pathological situations. The goal of this study is to show that a computational epigenetics approach can discriminate between CpG islands that are prone to methylation from those that remain unmethylated. We develop a bioinformatics scoring and prediction method on the basis of a set of 1,184 DNA attributes, which refer to sequence, repeats, predicted structure, CpG islands, genes, predicted binding sites, conservation, and single nucleotide polymorphisms. These attributes are scored on 132 CpG islands across the entire human Chromosome 21, whose methylation status was previously established for normal human lymphocytes. Our results show that three groups of DNA attributes, namely certain sequence patterns, specific DNA repeats, and a particular DNA structure, are each highly correlated with CpG island methylation (correlation coefficients of 0.64, 0.66, and 0.49, respectively). We predicted, and subsequently experimentally examined 12 CpG islands from human Chromosome 21 with unknown methylation patterns and found more than 90% of our predictions to be correct. In addition, we applied our prediction method to analyzing Human Epigenome Project methylation data on human Chromosome 6 and again observed high prediction accuracy. In summary, our results suggest that DNA composition of CpG islands (sequence, repeats, and structure) plays a significant role in predisposing CpG islands for DNA methylation. This finding may have a strong impact on our understanding of changes in CpG island methylation in development and disease.     

Estimating the total mouse DNA methylation according to the B1 repetitive elements

Measuring the degree of methylation of the B1 element in mouse may represent the global DNA methylation status because about 30,000 copies of the B1 element are randomly dispersed in the total mouse genome. Six CpG dinucleotides are located within each 163 bp size of B1 element, and each CpG dinucleotide was partially methylated. We quantitated the DNA methylation of the B1 repetitive elements by performing PCR for the methylation specific PCR (MSP) and also by the pyrosequencing. Each CpG dinucleotide was methylated at an average of 9% in the mouse genome by the pyrosequencing and MSP. Especially, we checked whether CpG methylation of the B1 element could respond to a treatment of the DNA methylation inhibitor, 5-azacytidine (5-AzaC). Consequently, the calibration graph resulting from measuring the relative CpG methylation percentage of the B1 element is linearly decreased with the increasing amount of 5-AzaC (up to 50 ng/ml concentration) in the NIH3T3 cells with a standard deviation of only 1.73% between three independent assays. Our methods can be applied to the routine analysis of the global DNA methylation changes in mouse in vivo and in vitro in pharmaceuticals and basic epigenetic research with efforts being less labor-intensive.     

High density DNA methylation array with single CpG site resolution

We have developed a new generation of genome-wide DNA methylation BeadChip which allows high-throughput methylation profiling of the human genome. The new high density BeadChip can assay over 480K CpG sites and analyze twelve samples in parallel. The innovative content includes coverage of 99% of RefSeq genes with multiple probes per gene, 96% of CpG islands from the UCSC database, CpG island shores and additional content selected from whole-genome bisulfite sequencing data and input from DNA methylation experts. The well-characterized Infinium® Assay is used for analysis of CpG methylation using bisulfite-converted genomic DNA. We applied this technology to analyze DNA methylation in normal and tumor DNA samples and compared results with whole-genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) data obtained for the same samples. Highly comparable DNA methylation profiles were generated by the array and sequencing methods (average R² of 0.95). The ability to determine genome-wide methylation patterns will rapidly advance methylation research.     

The influence of CpG (5′-d(CpG)-3′ dinucleotides) methylation on ultrasonic DNA fragmentation

Abstract

DNA methylation is an important way of gene regulation. The variety of methods for DNA methylation analysis based on chemical modification or enzyme digestion has been proposed. However, DNA is able to undergo transformations under physical power. Here, we report that the cytosine methylation in CpG dinucleotides determines the difference in fragmentation rate of methylated and unmethylated DNA under sonication. We found that at the beginning of sonication, methylated DNAs are degraded faster than unmethylated one, and the difference in fragmentation degree can be evaluated with high reliability by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). The optimal parameters that provide the greatest difference in amount of amplifiable DNA targets corresponding to fragmentation degree are the following: moderate amplicon size (about 150–250?bp), medium CpG sparseness (one CpG dinucleotide per ～12–14 nucleotides of the chain), and short sonication time (less than 5?min). Along with CpG, the CpA and CpT contents of amplified regions should be taken into account for proper DNA fragmentation by ultrasound as well. The obtained data could be used for elaboration of a method for comparative methylation testing, when there is no need to detect methylation of certain CpG dinucleotides. This method will be simple (can be used by any technician familiar with PCR), low cost (no need to use an expensive reagents), and fast (only brief DNA sonication and conventional qPCR are carried out).

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma