Published in Epigenetics
Genomes of KhoeSan individuals of the Kalahari Desert provide the greatest understanding of single nucleotide diversity in the human genome. Compared with individuals in industrialized environments, the KhoeSan have a unique foraging and hunting lifestyle. Given these dramatic environmental differences, and the responsiveness of the methylome to en...
Published in Epigenetics
The presence of 5-hydroxymethyl cytosine in DNA has been previously associated with ageing. Using in silico analysis of normal liver samples we presently observed that in 5-hydroxymethyl cytosine sequences, DNA methylation is dependent on the co-presence of G-quadruplexes and palindromes. This association exhibits discrete patterns depending on G-q...
Published in Epigenetics
Possible phenotypic impairments associated with maternal stress during gestation in beef cattle may be explained by epigenetic effects. This study examined the impact of prenatal transportation stress on DNA methylation of lymphocytes of Brahman cows over the first 5 years of life. Methylation analysis through reduced representation bisulphite sequ...
Published in Epigenetics
Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a heterogeneous myeloid malignancy characterized by recurrent clonal events, including mutations in epigenetically relevant genes such as DNMT3A, ASXL1, IDH1/2, and TET2. Next-generation sequencing analysis of a mother and son pair who both developed adult-onset diploid AML identified a novel germline missense mutat...
Published in Epigenetics
Overweight/obesity is the main risk factor for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). In our cohort of pregnant women with GDM, n = 19, and without, n = 22, we previously reported a significant increase in SOCS3 mRNA expression (+62%) in visceral adipose tissue (VAT) according to GDM, without altered promoter DNA-methylation. Here, we examined methyl...
Published in Epigenetics
Latinos are heavily affected with childhood asthma. Little is known about epigenetic mechanisms of asthma in Latino youth. We conducted a meta-analysis of two epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) of asthma, using DNA from white blood cells (WBCs) from 1,136 Latino children and youth aged 6 to 20 years. Genes near the top CpG sites in this EWAS...
Published in Epigenetics
Music-listening and performance have been shown to affect human gene expression. In order to further elucidate the biological basis of the effects of music on the human body, we studied the effects of music-listening on gene regulation by sequencing microRNAs of the listeners (Music Group) and their controls (Control Group) without music exposure. ...
Published in Epigenetics
The SET1 family of enzymes are well known for their involvement in the histone 3 lysine 4 (H3K4) methylation, a conserved trait of euchromatin associated with transcriptional activation. These methyltransferases are distinct, and involved in various biological functions in the cell. Impairment in the function of SET1 family members leads to a numbe...
Published in Epigenetics
Illumina BeadChips are widely utilized in epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS). Several studies have reported that many probes on these arrays have poor reliability. Here, we compare different pre-processing methods to improve intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC). We describe the characteristics of ICC across the genome, within and betwe...
Published in Epigenetics
Maternal stress is associated with adverse child health. Breast milk microRNAs encapsulated in extracellular vesicles (EVs) are involved in mother-infant biochemical communication during early-life programming. We leverage the PRogramming of Intergenerational Stress Mechanisms (PRISM) pregnancy cohort to investigate associations between maternal st...
