Project description:Hypermethylation of tumor suppressor gene (TSG) promoters confers growth advantages to cancer cells, but how these changes arise is poorly understood. Here, we report that tumor hypoxia reduces the activity of oxygen-dependent TET enzymes, which catalyze DNA de-methylation through 5-methylcytosine oxidation. This occurs independently of hypoxia-associated alterations in TET gene expression, basal metabolism, HIF activity or nuclear reactive oxygen species, but directly depends on oxygen shortage. Hypoxia-induced loss of TET activity increases hypermethylation at gene promoters in vitro, while also in patients, gene promoters are markedly more methylated in hypoxic than normoxic tumors. Affected genes are frequently involved in DNA repair, cell cycle regulation, angiogenesis and metastasis, indicating cellular selection of hypermethylation events. Overall, up to 50% of the tumor-associated hypermethylation is ascribable to hypoxia across various cancer types. Accordingly, spontaneous murine breast tumors become hypermethylated when rendered hypoxic through vessel pruning, whereas vessel normalisation rescues this effect. Tumor hypoxia thus acts as a novel regulator underlying DNA methylation.
Project description:Hypermethylation of tumor suppressor gene (TSG) promoters confers growth advantages to cancer cells, but how these changes arise is poorly understood. Here, we report that tumor hypoxia reduces the activity of oxygen-dependent TET enzymes, which catalyze DNA de-methylation through 5-methylcytosine oxidation. This occurs independently of hypoxia-associated alterations in TET gene expression, basal metabolism, HIF activity or nuclear reactive oxygen species, but directly depends on oxygen shortage. Hypoxia-induced loss of TET activity increases hypermethylation at gene promoters in vitro, while also in patients, gene promoters are markedly more methylated in hypoxic than normoxic tumors. Affected genes are frequently involved in DNA repair, cell cycle regulation, angiogenesis and metastasis, indicating cellular selection of hypermethylation events. Overall, up to 50% of the tumor-associated hypermethylation is ascribable to hypoxia across various cancer types. Accordingly, spontaneous murine breast tumors become hypermethylated when rendered hypoxic through vessel pruning, whereas vessel normalisation rescues this effect. Tumor hypoxia thus acts as a novel regulator underlying DNA methylation.
Project description:Hypermethylation of tumor suppressor gene (TSG) promoters confers growth advantages to cancer cells, but how these changes arise is poorly understood. Here, we report that tumor hypoxia reduces the activity of oxygen-dependent TET enzymes, which catalyze DNA de-methylation through 5-methylcytosine oxidation. This occurs independently of hypoxia-associated alterations in TET gene expression, basal metabolism, HIF activity or nuclear reactive oxygen species, but directly depends on oxygen shortage. Hypoxia-induced loss of TET activity increases hypermethylation at gene promoters in vitro, while also in patients, gene promoters are markedly more methylated in hypoxic than normoxic tumors. Affected genes are frequently involved in DNA repair, cell cycle regulation, angiogenesis and metastasis, indicating cellular selection of hypermethylation events. Overall, up to 50% of the tumor-associated hypermethylation is ascribable to hypoxia across various cancer types. Accordingly, spontaneous murine breast tumors become hypermethylated when rendered hypoxic through vessel pruning, whereas vessel normalisation rescues this effect. Tumor hypoxia thus acts as a novel regulator underlying DNA methylation.
Project description:Hypermethylation of tumor suppressor gene (TSG) promoters confers growth advantages to cancer cells, but how these changes arise is poorly understood. Here, we report that tumor hypoxia reduces the activity of oxygen-dependent TET enzymes, which catalyze DNA de-methylation through 5-methylcytosine oxidation. This occurs independently of hypoxia-associated alterations in TET gene expression, basal metabolism, HIF activity or nuclear reactive oxygen species, but directly depends on oxygen shortage. Hypoxia-induced loss of TET activity increases hypermethylation at gene promoters in vitro, while also in patients, gene promoters are markedly more methylated in hypoxic than normoxic tumors. Affected genes are frequently involved in DNA repair, cell cycle regulation, angiogenesis and metastasis, indicating cellular selection of hypermethylation events. Overall, up to 50% of the tumor-associated hypermethylation is ascribable to hypoxia across various cancer types. Accordingly, spontaneous murine breast tumors become hypermethylated when rendered hypoxic through vessel pruning, whereas vessel normalisation rescues this effect. Tumor hypoxia thus acts as a novel regulator underlying DNA methylation.
Project description:In mammals, cytosine methylation (5mC) is widely distributed throughout the genome but is notably depleted from active promoters and enhancers. While the role of DNA methylation in promoter silencing has been well documented, the function of this epigenetic mark at enhancers remains unclear. Recent experiments have demonstrated that enhancers are enriched for 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), an oxidization product of the Tet family of 5mC dioxygenases and an intermediate of DNA demethylation. These results support the involvement of Tet proteins in the regulation of dynamic DNA methylation at enhancers. By mapping DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation at base resolution, we find that deletion of Tet2 causes extensive loss of 5hmC at enhancers, accompanied by enhancer hypermethylation, reduction of enhancer activity, and delayed gene induction in the early steps of differentiation. Our results reveal that DNA demethylation modulates enhancer activity, and its disruption influences the timing of transcriptome reprogramming during cellular differentiation. We performed traditional bisulfite sequencing, TAB-Seq, RNA-Seq, and ChIP-Seq for 6 histone modifications in two biological replicates of wild-type, Tet1-/-, and Tet2-/- mouse ES cells. We also performed RNA-Seq analysis during a timecourse of differentiation to neural progenitor cells.
Project description:Genome wide DNA methylation profiling of normoxic and hypoxic non-small-cell lung cancer samples for 5mC and 5hmC. The Illumina Infinium 450k Human DNA methylation Beadchip v1.2 was used to obtain DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation profiles across 485,512 CpGs from DNA extracted from fresh-frozen tumor samples. Samples included 12 hypoxic and 12 normoxic tumor samples, with hypoxia determined according to the hypoxia metagene score (Buffa et al, Br J Cancer 2010). To profile hydroxymethylation, 5hmC was glycosylated and 5mC was oxidised as described by Yu and colleagues (Nat Protoc 2012), and hydroxymethylation and methylation were differentially profiled according to the Nazor and colleagues (Genomics 2014). Hypermethylation of tumor suppressor gene (TSG) promoters confers growth advantages to cancer cells, but how these changes arise is poorly understood. Here, we report that tumor hypoxia reduces the activity of oxygen-dependent TET enzymes, which catalyze DNA de-methylation through 5-methylcytosine oxidation. This occurs independently of hypoxia-associated alterations in TET gene expression, basal metabolism, HIF activity or nuclear reactive oxygen species, but directly depends on oxygen shortage. Hypoxia-induced loss of TET activity increases hypermethylation at gene promoters in vitro, while also in patients, gene promoters are markedly more methylated in hypoxic than normoxic tumors. Affected genes are frequently involved in DNA repair, cell cycle regulation, angiogenesis and metastasis, indicating cellular selection of hypermethylation events. Overall, up to 50% of the tumor-associated hypermethylation is ascribable to hypoxia across various cancer types. Accordingly, spontaneous murine breast tumors become hypermethylated when rendered hypoxic through vessel pruning, whereas vessel normalisation rescues this effect. Tumor hypoxia thus acts as a novel regulator underlying DNA methylation.
Project description:N4-methylcytosine is a major DNA modification integral to restriction-modification (R-M) systems in bacterial genomes. Here we describe 4mC-Tet-Assisted Bisulfite-sequencing (4mC-TAB-seq), a method that accurately and rapidly reveals the genome-wide locations of N4-methylcytosines at single-base resolution. By coupling Tet-mediated oxidation with a modified sodium bisulfite conversion reaction, unmodified cytosines and 5-methylcytosines are read out as thymines, whereas N4-methylcytosines are read out as cytosines revealing their positions throughout the genome. 4mC-TAB-seq