DNA methylation-linked diseases and analytical methods

Abstract

As people investigate deeply into the genetic level of the causes/mechanisms behind serious diseases, scientists found out that epigenetics can explain some of the causes of serious diseases such as cancer. The study of epigenetics focuses on the differential gene expression of a DNA sequence that does not involve any changes to the original sequence. Proteins that interact with DNA and DNA letters themselves have the chemical ability to change how much a gene is switched on or off. Certain epigenetic changes can be passed from parent cells to the daughter cells during cell division. There are various mechanisms of epigenetics, and DNA methylation was one of the earliest epigenetic mechanisms to be discovered. DNA methylation controls gene expression by either attracting proteins that play a role in the regulation of genes or by preventing transcription factors from binding to DNA sequence. This overview introduces several research studies of serious diseases: breast cancer, autism spectrum disorder, and obesity that are caused by DNA methylation and some analytical methods: bisulfite conversion-based assays and enzymatic methyl sequencing which are used to investigate DNA methylation.