Analysis of the Effect of Methylation Alterations on Enhancer Activity in Cancer

Abstract

Objective To analyze and identify the impact of methylation changes on enhancer activity in cancer. Methods Obtain enhancers, transcription factor binding sites, and molecular pathway data from the human enhancer database FANTOM5, methylated DNA binding transcription factor database MeDReaders, and molecular feature database MSigDB, identify active enhancers affected by methylation, normal and cancer differential methylation enhancers, and probes, and annotate them on CpG Island, Based on the co expression of enhancers and genes, further identify the target genes for enhancer methylation regulation and perform functional enrichment analysis in the pan cancer module.Finally, perform COX proportional risk regression analysis and functional analysis pattern recognition. Results A total of 1 155 enhancers regulated by methylation were identified, with most of their corresponding probes exhibiting differential methylation in cancer, while a few probes corresponding to enhancers regulated by methylation in cancer did not exhibit differential methylation.The target genes screened based on the co expression of enhancers and genes are related to cancer related pathways, and these genes are also involved in important pathways related to cancer(P53 pathway), transcription(script pathway), signal transduction, and metabolism;There are many ternary combinations associated with survival in bladder urothelial carcinoma, and these target genes are also distributed in cancer related pathways and other life and health related pathways. Conclusion This study systematically analyzed the enhancer regulation affected by methylation in cancer and identified key enhancers involved in the development of cancer by regulating important target genes.

Keywords

• enhancer
• methylation
• transcriptional regulatory networks
• functional enrichment
• survival analysis