title: Toward single-molecule optical mapping of the epigenome.
abstract: The past decade has seen an explosive growth in the utilization of single-molecule techniques for the study of complex systems. The ability to resolve phenomena otherwise masked by ensemble averaging has made these approaches especially attractive for the study of biological systems, where stochastic events lead to inherent inhomogeneity at the population level. The complex composition of the genome has made it an ideal system to study at the single-molecule level, and methods aimed at resolving genetic information from long, individual, genomic DNA molecules have been in use for the last 30 years. These methods, and particularly optical-based mapping of DNA, have been instrumental in highlighting genomic variation and contributed significantly to the assembly of many genomes including the human genome. Nanotechnology and nanoscopy have been a strong driving force for advancing genomic mapping approaches, allowing both better manipulation of DNA on the nanoscale and enhanced optical resolving power for analysis of genomic information. During the past few years, these developments have been adopted also for epigenetic studies. The common principle for these studies is the use of advanced optical microscopy for the detection of fluorescently labeled epigenetic marks on long, extended DNA molecules. Here we will discuss recent single-molecule studies for the mapping of chromatin composition and epigenetic DNA modifications, such as DNA methylation.
authors: Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, School of Chemistry, Tel Aviv University , Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
authors: Michal
authors: M
authors: Levy-Sakin
authors: Assaf
authors: A
authors: Grunwald
authors: Soohong
authors: S
authors: Kim
authors: Natalie R
authors: NR
authors: Gassman
authors: Anna
authors: A
authors: Gottfried
authors: Josh
authors: J
authors: Antelman
authors: Younggyu
authors: Y
authors: Kim
authors: Sam O
authors: SO
authors: Ho
authors: Robin
authors: R
authors: Samuel
authors: Xavier
authors: X
authors: Michalet
authors: Ron R
authors: RR
authors: Lin
authors: Thomas
authors: T
authors: Dertinger
authors: Andrew S
authors: AS
authors: Kim
authors: Sangyoon
authors: S
authors: Chung
authors: Ryan A
authors: RA
authors: Colyer
authors: Elmar
authors: E
authors: Weinhold
authors: Shimon
authors: S
authors: Weiss
authors: Yuval
authors: Y
authors: Ebenstein
mesh_terms: D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D016678:Genome; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA