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Updated: Nov 7, 2025

An Integrated Platform for Genome-wide Mapping of Chromatin States Using High-throughput ChIP-sequencing in Tumor Tissues
Published on: April 5, 2018
Epigenome Chaos: Stochastic and Deterministic DNA Methylation Events Drive Cancer Evolution
Giusi Russo1, Alfonso Tramontano2, Ilaria Iodice1
1Dipartimento di Medicina Molecolare e Biotecnologie Mediche, Università di Napoli "Federico II", 80131 Naples, Italy.
Abstract:
Cancer evolution is associated with genomic instability and epigenetic alterations, which contribute to the inter and intra tumor heterogeneity, making genetic markers not accurate to monitor tumor evolution. Epigenetic changes, aberrant DNA methylation and modifications of chromatin proteins, determine the "epigenome chaos", which means that the changes of epigenetic traits are randomly generated, but strongly selected by deterministic events. Disordered changes of DNA methylation profiles are the hallmarks of all cancer types, but it is not clear if aberrant methylation is the cause or the consequence of cancer evolution. Critical points to address are the profound epigenetic intra- and inter-tumor heterogeneity and the nature of the heterogeneity of the methylation patterns in each single cell in the tumor population. To analyze the methylation heterogeneity of tumors, new technological and informatic tools have been developed. This review discusses the state of the art of DNA methylation analysis and new approaches to reduce or solve the complexity of methylated alleles in DNA or cell populations.
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