title: Towards DNA methylation detection using biosensors.
abstract: DNA methylation, a stable and heritable covalent modification which mostly occurs in the context of a CpG dinucleotide, has great potential as a biomarker to detect disease, provide prognoses and predict therapeutic responses. It can be detected in a quantitative manner by many different approaches both genome-wide and at specific gene loci, in various biological fluids such as urine, plasma, and serum, which can be obtained without invasive procedures. The current, classical methods are effective in studying DNA methylation patterns, however, for the most part; they have major drawbacks such as expensive instruments, complicated and time consuming protocols as well as relatively low sensitivity, and high false positive rates. To overcome these obstacles, great efforts have been made toward the development of reliable sensor devices to solve these limitations, providing sensitive, fast and cost-effective measurements. The use of biosensors for DNA methylation biomarkers has increased in recent years, because they are portable, simple, rapid, and inexpensive which offers a straightforward way to detect methylated biomarkers. In this review, we give an overview of the conventional techniques for the detection of DNA methylation and then will focus on recent advances in biosensor based methylation detection that eliminate bisulfite conversion and PCR amplification.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Nanotechnology, School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Leila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Syedmoradi
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Nanotechnology, School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Fariba
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Esmaeili
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Marshall University, One John Marshall Drive, Huntington, WV 25755, USA. norton@marshall.edu.
authors.forename: Michael L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Norton
mesh_terms: D015374:Biosensing Techniques; D018899:CpG Islands; D019175:DNA Methylation; D005819:Genetic Markers; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction
chemical_list: D005819:Genetic Markers