title: In silico Identification of SFRP1 as a Hypermethylated Gene in Colorectal Cancers.
abstract: Aberrant DNA methylation, as an epigenetic marker of cancer, influences tumor development and progression. We downloaded publicly available DNA methylation and gene expression datasets of matched cancer and normal pairs from the Cancer Genome Atlas Data Portal and performed a systematic computational analysis. This study has three aims to screen genes that show hypermethylation and downregulated patterns in colorectal cancers, to identify differentially methylated regions in one of these genes, SFRP1, and to test whether the SFRP genes affect survival or not. Our results show that 31 hypermethylated genes had a negative correlation with gene expression. Among them, SFRP1 had a differentially methylated pattern at each methylation site. We also show that SFRP1 may be a potential biomarker for colorectal cancer survival.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioinformatics and Life Science, Soongsil University, Seoul 156-743, Korea.
authors.forename: Jongbum
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioinformatics and Life Science, Soongsil University, Seoul 156-743, Korea.
authors.forename: Sangsoo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kim
keywords: DNA Methylation; colorectal cancer; frizzled related protein-1; survival analysis