Mizuho Kikuyama, Hideyuki Takeshima, Takayuki Kinoshita, Eriko Okochi-Takada, Mika Wakabayashi, Sadako Akashi-Tanaka, Toshihisa Ogawa, Yasuyuki Seto, Toshikazu Ushijima
Identification of tumor-suppressor genes (TSGs) silenced by aberrant methylation of promoter CpG islands (CGIs) is important, but hampered by a large number of genes methylated as passengers of carcinogenesis. To overcome this issue, we here took advantage of the fact that the vast majority of genes methylated in cancers lack, in normal cells, RNA polymerase II (Pol II) and have trimethylation of histone H3 lysine 27 (H3K27me3) in their promoter CGIs. First, we demonstrated that three of six known TSGs in breast cancer and two of three in colon cancer had Pol II and lacked H3K27me3 in normal cells, being outliers to the general rule...
September 28, 2012: Cancer Letters