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Updated: Jun 30, 2025

Rapid and Efficient Spatiotemporal Monitoring of Normal and Aberrant Cytosine Methylation within Intact Zebrafish Embryos
Published on: August 18, 2022
Aberrant DNA methylation distorts developmental trajectories in atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumors
Meeri Pekkarinen1, Kristiina Nordfors2,3,4, Joonas Uusi-Mäkelä1
1Prostate Cancer Research Center, Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University and Tays Cancer Center, Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland.
Abstract:
Atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumors (AT/RTs) are pediatric brain tumors known for their aggressiveness and aberrant but still unresolved epigenetic regulation. To better understand their malignancy, we investigated how AT/RT-specific DNA hypermethylation was associated with gene expression and altered transcription factor binding and how it is linked to upstream regulation. Medulloblastomas, choroid plexus tumors, pluripotent stem cells, and fetal brain were used as references. A part of the genomic regions, which were hypermethylated in AT/RTs similarly as in pluripotent stem cells and demethylated in the fetal brain, were targeted by neural transcriptional regulators. AT/RT-unique DNA hypermethylation was associated with polycomb repressive complex 2 and linked to suppressed genes with a role in neural development and tumorigenesis. Activity of the several NEUROG/NEUROD pioneer factors, which are unable to bind to methylated DNA, was compromised via the suppressed expression or DNA hypermethylation of their target sites, which was also experimentally validated for NEUROD1 in medulloblastomas and AT/RT samples. These results highlight and characterize the role of DNA hypermethylation in AT/RT malignancy and halted neural cell differentiation.
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