Degradation of methylation signals in cryopreserved DNA.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Blood-based DNA methylation has shown great promise as a biomarker in a wide variety of diseases. Studies of DNA methylation in blood often utilize samples which have been cryopreserved for years or even decades. Therefore, changes in DNA methylation associated with long-term cryopreservation can introduce biases or otherwise mislead methylation analyses of cryopreserved DNA. However, previous studies have presented conflicting results with studies reporting hypomethylation, no effect, or even hypermethylation of DNA following long-term cryopreservation. These studies may have been limited by insufficient sample sizes, or by their profiling of methylation only on an aggregate global scale, or profiling of only a few CpGs.

Results

We analyzed two large prospective

SUBMITTER: Lee NY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10496221 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature