Co-reporter: Yafen Wang, Chaoxing Liu, Tianlu Wang, Tingting Hong, Haomiao Su, Shuyi Yu, Hongwei Song, Songmei Liu, Xin Zhou, Wuxiang Mao, and Xiang Zhou
pp: 3348
Publication Date(Web):February 9, 2016
DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.5b04939
DNA methylation is a significant epigenetic modification of the genome that is involved in regulating many cellular processes. An increasing number of human diseases have been discovered to be associated with aberrant DNA methylation, and aberrant DNA methylation has been deemed to be a potential biomarker for diseases such as cancers. A safe, nontoxic, and sensitive method for accurate detection of 5-methylcytosine in genomic DNA is extremely useful for early diagnosis and therapy of cancers. In this paper, we established a novel system to detect 5-methylcytosine, which is based on bisulfite treatment, asymmetric PCR, and specific DNA damaging reagents. Our method could be used for identifying the loci of 5mC in genomic DNA and detecting the DNA methylation levels in tissues as well.