Analyzing DNA methylation patterns during tumor evolution

Abstract

Epigenetic modifications play a key role in cellular development and tumorigenesis. Recent large-scale genomic studies have shown that mutations in players of the epigenetic machinery and concomitant perturbation of epigenomic patterning are frequent events in tumors. Among epigenetic marks, DNA methylation is one of the best studied. Hyper- and hypo-methylation events of specific regulatory elements (such as promoters and enhancers) are sometimes thought to be correlated with expression of nearby genes. High-throughput bisulfite converted sequencing is currently the technology of choice for studying DNA methylation in base-pair resolution and on whole-genome scale. Such broad and high-resolution coverage investigations of the epigenome provide unprecedented opportunities to analyze DNA methylation patterns, which are correlated with tumorigenesis, tumor evolution, and tumor progression. However, few computational pipelines are available to the public to perform systematic DNA methylation analysis. Utilizing open source tools, we here describe a comprehensive computational methodology to thoroughly analyze DNA methylation patterns during tumor evolution based on bisulfite converted sequencing data, including intra-tumor methylation heterogeneity.