Changes of bivalent chromatin coincide with increased expression of developmental genes in cancer.

ABSTRACT: Bivalent (poised or paused) chromatin comprises activating and repressing histone modifications at the same location. This combination of epigenetic marks at promoter or enhancer regions keeps genes expressed at low levels but poised for rapid activation. Typically, DNA at bivalent promoters is only lowly methylated in normal cells, but frequently shows elevated methylation levels in cancer samples. Here, we developed a universal classifier built from chromatin data that can identify cancer samples solely from hypermethylation of bivalent chromatin. Tested on over 7,000 DNA methylation data sets from several cancer types, it reaches an AUC of 0.92. Although higher levels of DNA methylation are often associated with transcriptional silencing, counter-intuitive positive statistical dependenc

SUBMITTER: Bernhart SH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5120258 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature