Study of global DNA methylation in monozygotic twins with cerebral palsy

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to study the global DNA Methylation in monozygotic (MZ) twins with cerebral palsy. Two pairs of twins (a cerebral palsy children, a normal child) admitted to the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University were selected as subjects. The phenol-chloroform method was used to extract DNA from venous blood and micro satellite DNA genotyping technique was used to identify the eggs of the twins. DNA methylation fragments were enriched by MBD affinity column chromatography, followed by Solexa sequencing and bioinformatics analysis. In this study, we found that there were different DNA hypermethylation regions between each pair of twins and normal children through global DNA methylation analysis technique by analyzing the blood cells of two pairs of monozygotic twins with cerebral palsy and normal infants. The results revealed the region of DNA methylation and the protein coding genes of promoter region of common methylation of cerebral palsy were both higher than normal children. These common promoter hypermethylation genes in cerebral palsy are involved in a variety of biological processes such as membrane protein transport, neuronal development, apoptosis, and metabolism. Moreover, DNA methylation plays an important role in gene expression. We hypothesized that the onset of cerebral palsy in twins is associated with hypermethylation of the promoter which inhibiting the expression of hypermethylation genes in children with cerebral palsy. The current research provided a basis for further study of the large sample of twins and sporadic cerebral palsy.