Discussions will focus on a variety of exciting topics, including:
Associate Director of Collaborations and Applications
biomodal
Early detection of colorectal cancer (CRC) has the potential to improve treatment outcomes and survival rates. Liquid biopsy for profiling of cell free DNA (cfDNA) in blood holds huge promise for early CRC detection in otherwise asymptomatic patients.
Epigenetic biomarkers have already been shown to significantly contribute to cancer detection in liquid biopsies, but traditional DNA methylation sequencing conflates two cytosine modifications, 5-methylcytosine (5mC) or 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), with different and opposing biological functions. Discrimination of these two states could therefore be crucial for increasing the amount of functional information for CRC detection.
Associate Director of Collaborations and Applications
biomodal
The O-GlcNAc transferase OGT interacts robustly with all three mammalian Ten-Eleven Translocation (TET) methylcytosine dioxygenases. Using duet evoC 6-base sequencing (enabling individual discrimination of A, C, T, G, 5mC and 5hmC), we show that deletion of the Ogt gene in mESC results in a widespread increase in the TET product 5hmC in both euchromatic and heterochromatic compartments, with concomitant reduction of the TET substrate 5mC at the same genomic regions. mESC treated with an OGT inhibitor also displayed increased 5hmC demonstrating OGT enzymatic activity is needed to suppress TET activity. This indicates that OGT restrains TET activity and limits untoward DNA demethylation in a manner that requires the TET-OGT interaction and the catalytic activity of OGT. DNA hypomethylation in OGT-deficient cells was accompanied by de-repression of transposable elements (TEs) predominantly located in heterochromatin.
Associate Director of Collaborations and Applications
biomodal
We present a computational toolkit to analyse 5mC and 5hmC modifications at scale and describe its performance on a novel liquid biopsy dataset.
Methylation data has diverse applications in cancer, including early-stage diagnosis through liquid biopsy, classification to guide treatment pathways, and prognosis. However, analyzing methylation data poses significant challenges, as it is constrained by scalability and usability issues.
Here are the relevant biomodal resources for information. Find poster presentation information, case studies, interviews, and more.
Novel single-base-resolution solution that delivers the standard four-base sequencing (A, C, G, and T), and distinguishes between 5‑methylcytosine (5mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), on the same DNA molecule.
Liquid biopsy represents a groundbreaking advancement in disease diagnostics, offering a less invasive alternative to traditional tissue biopsies, particularly for cancer.
The combinatorial power of genetics and epigenetics is vital to understanding biology in healthy and cancerous states.
Novel solution – duet evoC – distinguishes 5-methylcytosine (5mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) revealing unprecedented insights into current and future states of disease using one 5ng DNA sample
Discover how new technology in next generation sequencing can capture the standard A, C, G, T bases plus epigenetic information in a single workflow.
