What is it about?
Conservation is often used to identify likely functional genomic regions. Here we use epigenetic conservation as an indicator of function in human colorectal cancers by comparing DNA methylation from opposite sides of the same cancer. We find that DepMap essential genes and genes involved in immune surveillance are preferentially conserved in a tumor specific manner.
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Why is it important?
The finding that the epigenetic configurations of genes involved in immune evasion are preferentially conserved in colorectal cancers indicate selection upon these genes. In other words, a successful cancer is still subject to immunoediting. Interestingly, the conserved epigenetic configurations are different between tumors, suggesting that each tumor finds a different way to remain occult to the immune system. This individual specfic conservation may reflect that each cancer has a different set of neoantigens that must remain occult to the immune system.
Perspectives
Genome conservation is often use to identify regions under selection, even when the roles of these conserved regions are unknown. The same strategy can be applied to somatic epigenomes and somatic cells to identify which genes are most important to cell survival. Epigenetic conservation is a way cells can signal which of their genes are most important to their survival within the context of their native microenvironments.
darryl shibata
University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Functional human genes typically exhibit epigenetic conservation, PLOS One, September 2021, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0253250.
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