DNA methylation study of fetus genome through a genome-wide analysis

DNA methylation is a crucial epigenetic modification of the genome which is involved in embryonic development, transcription, chromatin structure, X chromosome inactivation, genomic imprinting and chromosome stability. Consistent with these important roles, DNA methylation has been demonstrated to be required for vertebrate early embryogenesis and essential for regulating temporal and spatial expression of genes controlling cell fate and differentiation. Further studies have shown that abnormal DNA methylation is associated with human diseases including the embryonic development diseases. We attempt to study the DNA methylation status of CpG islands in fetus related to fetus growth and development.

GeneChip® Human Tiling 2.0R Array set is used for analysis of methylated DNA in a whole-genome wide in 8 pairs amniotic fluid and maternal blood DNA samples.

We found 1 fetus hypermethylation DNA markers and 4 fetus hypomethylation DNA markers though a Genome-wide analysis. These DNA markers all found to be associated with the critical genes for fetus growth and development (SH2D3C gene, EML3 gene, TRIM71 gene, HOXA3 gene and HOXA5 gene).

These genes can be used as a biomarker for association studying of embryonic development, pathological pregnancy and so on. The present study has provided new and fundamental insights into the roles that DNA methylation has in embryonic development and in the pathological pregnancy.