Overview

Analysis of Gene Expression Omnibus Leukaemia Data from the Illumina HumanMethylation450 Array

Alice Zhu, Rachel Edgar, Shaun Jackman and Nick Fishbane

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DNA methylation has recently been emerging as an important feature of cancer¹. Changes in the methylation of genes and their promoters can cause a change of gene expression that may result in oncogenesis. Several types of leukaemia are known to have mutations in genes involved in DNA methylation^2,3. Study of genome-wide DNA methylation patterns may lead to new insights into the development of leukaemia. Public availability of genomic data allows for meta studies with samples sizes that would not be possible without the sharing of data between research groups. The Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) represents a vast quantity of data for large-scale research including many studies on DNA methylation and cancer, and specifically leukaemia.

For our study we will compare the methylation patterns in Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia (APL) and Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) to each other and to control samples. We hope to identify biologically relevant changes in CpG island level methylation that could relate to phenotypic differences seen between APL and ALL.