Methylation markers: a potential force driving cancer diagnostics forward.
Khandige S, Shanbhogue VV, Chakrabarty S, Kapettu S.
Manipal Life Sciences Center, Manipal University, Manipal, Karnataka, India. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Abstract
Epigenetics, transcending genetics, genomics, and molecular biology, is now poised to be the avant-garde beacon of biological science. The rise of DNA methylation studies marks a new dawn in the field of epigenetics, which only a few decades ago was largely underestimated, but is now a dynamic area of research challenging and revising traditional paradigms of gene expression and behavior. Cancer research enjoys a major share of this attention to DNA methylation and it has been widely accepted for some time now that cancer is as much an epigenetic phenomenon as it is genetic. Epigenetic lesions and perturbations are acquired during the life of an individual and accumulate with aging and represent the flip side of the same coin that bears genetic mutations. Both events, either individually or in cooperation, result in the development and progression of cancer. Epigenetic research and the hunt for strong methylation markers has been ably mitigated by new and improved high throughput technology that has improved the efficacy and enabled the rapid progress of biomarker