Recent evidence suggests a link between DNA methylation and

Recent evidence suggests a link between DNA methylation and tumor evolution. Explain this link. Use an example from literature to support your answer.

Solution

Hypermethylation in cancer cells, which is sequence specific leads to genomic instability as a result of the silencing of genes involved in cell cycle regulation. Methylation of CpG islands in the promoter regions of DNA mismatch repair results in the formation of cancer cells (Robertson et al 2013).

DNA methylation changes are identified as the most important changes in the causage of prostate cancer (Massie et al 2017).