Epigenetic conservation infers that colorectal cancer progenitors retain the phenotypic plasticity of normal colon.

ABSTRACT: Plasticity, or the ability to rapidly and reversibly change phenotypes, may help explain how a single progenitor cell eventually generates a tumor with many different cell phenotypes. Normal colon plasticity is characterized by a conserved and broadly permissive epigenome, where expression and phenotype are determined by the microenvironment instead of epigenetic remodeling. To determine whether this stem-like plasticity is retained during progression, gene expression was measured with spatial transcriptomics and compared with gene-level DNA methylation in two colorectal cancers (CRCs). Like normal colon, genes that were differentially expressed between regions, subclones, and phenotypes (superficial, invasive, and metastatic) tended to have lower DNA methylation variability. We propose a

SUBMITTER: Street K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12635102 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature