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Corruption of the Intra-Gene DNA Methylation Architecture Is a Hallmark of Cancer

Bartlett, TE; Zaikin, A; Olhede, SC; West, J; Teschendorff, AE; Widschwendter, M; (2013) Corruption of the Intra-Gene DNA Methylation Architecture Is a Hallmark of Cancer. PLoS One , 8 (7) , Article e68285. 10.1371/journal.pone.0068285. Green open access

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Abstract

Epigenetic processes - including DNA methylation - are increasingly seen as having a fundamental role in chronic diseases like cancer. It is well known that methylation levels at particular genes or loci differ between normal and diseased tissue. Here we investigate whether the intra-gene methylation architecture is corrupted in cancer and whether the variability of levels of methylation of individual CpGs within a defined gene is able to discriminate cancerous from normal tissue, and is associated with heterogeneous tumour phenotype, as defined by gene expression. We analysed 270985 CpGs annotated to 18272 genes, in 3284 cancerous and 681 normal samples, corresponding to 14 different cancer types. In doing so, we found novel differences in intra-gene methylation pattern across phenotypes, particularly in those genes which are crucial for stem cell biology; our measures of intra-gene methylation architecture are a better determinant of phenotype than measures based on mean methylation level alone (K-S test [Formula: see text] in all 14 diseases tested). These per-gene methylation measures also represent a considerable reduction in complexity, compared to conventional per-CpG beta-values. Our findings strongly support the view that intra-gene methylation architecture has great clinical potential for the development of DNA-based cancer biomarkers.

Type: Article
Title: Corruption of the Intra-Gene DNA Methylation Architecture Is a Hallmark of Cancer
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0068285
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068285
Language: English
Additional information: © 2013 Bartlett et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. PMCID: PMC3712966
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL EGA Institute for Womens Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL EGA Institute for Womens Health > Womens Cancer
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Statistical Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1401345
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