Selective DNA methylation in cancers controls collateral damage induced by large structural variations.

ABSTRACT: Chromosomal instability is a hallmark of human cancers, and is characterized by large structural variations in the genome. Such large structural variations are expected to create intrinsic collateral stress due to gene dosage changes in many genes that are co-deleted or co-amplified in large chromosomal segments (onco-passenger genes). We show that the tumor-toxic effects of gene dosage changes of onco-passenger genes are compensated by the uncoupling of their copy number variations from their expression by means of selective DNA methylation. For example, collateral co-amplification of genes in tumor suppressor pathways, such as the TGF-β and inflammatory signaling pathways, are compensated by DNA hypermethylation to suppress their overexpression, while collateral deletion of pro-on

SUBMITTER: Mohanty V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5641056 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature