|
Information and Service
|
|
| This Article | |
 |
Supporting info |
|
PDF(286KB) |
|
Reference |
| Service and feedback | |
|
Add to citation manager |
|
Cite this article |
|
Email Alert |
|
Feedback |
|
View Feedback |
| Keywords | |
|
DNA methylation |
|
epigenome |
|
computational epigenomics |
| Authors | |
|
Michael Q. Zhang |
|
Andrew D. Smith |
Challenges in Understanding Genome-Wide DNA Methylation
Michael Q. Zhang1,2 (张奇伟) and Andrew D. Smith3, Member, ACM
1Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, U.S.A.
2Bioinformatics Division, TNLIST and MOE Key Lab of Bioinformatics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
3Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
DNA methylation is a chemical modification of the bases in genomes. This modification, most frequently found at CpG dinucleotides in eukaryotes, has been identified as having multiple critical functions in broad and diverse species of animals and plants, while mysteriously appears to be lacking from several other well-studied species. DNA methylation has well known and important roles in genome stability and defense, its pattern change highly correlates with gene regulation. Much evidence has linked abnormal DNA methylation to human diseases. Most prominently, aberrant DNA methylation is a common feature of cancer genomes. Elucidating the precise functions of DNA methylation therefore has great biomedical significance. Here we provide an update on large-scale experimental technologies for detecting DNA methylation on a genomic scale. We also discuss new prospect and challenges that computational biologist will face when analyzing DNA methylation data.
This work is supported by NIH under Grant Nos. ES017166 and HG001696.
Michael Q. Zhang obtained the B.S. degree in mech. eng. from Univ. Sci. & Tech. China in 1981 and Ph.D. degree in physics from Rutgers University in 1987. He studied statistical mechanics and integrable systems as a postdoctoral fellow at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU for three years and then moved to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for twenty years. He is now a professor at Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. He has also been a guest professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China since 2003. He has also been an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University since 1997. He has associated with the editorial board for Nucleic Acids Research, Bioinformatics, BMC Journals, etc. and served as chairman/section chair or program committee member for CSHL Meetings, ISMB, RECOMB, APBC, etc. Dr. Zhang is one of the pioneers in human genome research and made important contributions to computational genomics and epigenomics.
Andrew D. Smith received the B.A. degree in psychology and the B.C.S. degree (Bachelor of Computer Science) in 2000 and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from University of New Brunswich in 2004. Dr. Smith studied computational biology and genomics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory until 2008 at which time he moved to University of Southern California where he is currently assistant professor of biological sciences.