A Review on the Techniques for Characterizing and Predicting Human Genomic DNA Methylation
Epigenetic modification refers to heritable changes in genotypes or phenotypes through biochemical modifications
without altering the underlying DNA sequence. In humans, DNA methylation is a major epigenetic modification that
adds a methyl group mainly to the carbon-5 position of the cytosine pyrimidine ring in the cytosine guanine dinucleotide.
This epigenetic modification is crucial to normal development and cellular differentiation as well as a number of key
processes including genomic imprinting, X-chromosome inactivation, suppression of repetitive elements, and
tumorigenesis. Recently, a lot of resources and efforts have been devoted to the DNA methylation profiling of human
genome based on biochemical experiments or computational prediction. Here, we provide a review on these experimental
and computational techniques, and large-scaled DNA methylation data sets and databases. While the description of the
biochemical techniques is mainly to provide an overview of the biological background, we focus more on the
computational techniques, particularly on the data resources, methodologies and problems that have been studied. Our
goal is to provide a guidance for future bioinformatics research on DNA methylation.
Keywords: DNA methylation, computational epigenetics, prediction, Bisulfite Conversion, Enzyme, lymphoblastoid cell, skeletal muscle, fetal liver, pancreas,
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