Effects of DNA Methylation on Cancer and Aging

Simge Sevinç1, Oytun Erbaş1,2

1ERBAS Institute of Experimental Medicine, Illinois, USA & Gebze, Turkey
2Department of Physiology, Medical Faculty of Demiroğlu Bilim University, Istanbul, Turkey

Keywords: Aging, cancer, cytosine phospho guanine, deoxyribonucleic acid methylation

Abstract

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) methylation; It is an epigenetic factor that occurs via DNA methyltransferases (DNMT) and is often formed by methylation of regions called cytosine phospho guanine (CpG) islands in the genome. It has many macro and micro-level functions such as gene silencing, tissue-specific gene expression, genomic imprinting and the most well-known example, X chromosome inactivation. Recent evidence has shown that DNA methylation is associated with cancer and aging. It is known that global hypomethylation in cancer occurs directly as a result of an abnormality in DNA methylation. In this review, it was mentioned that abnormal DNA methylation, which also occurs in aging, can be used as a biomarker.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Financial Disclosure

The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.