Biophysics is reshaping our perception of the epigenome: from changing the landscape of how we study DNA-level epigenetic marks to enabling high-throughput applications

Kanapeckaitė, A., Burokienė, N., Mažeikienė, A., Cottrell, G. S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9098-7627 and Widera, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1686-130X (2021) Biophysics is reshaping our perception of the epigenome: from changing the landscape of how we study DNA-level epigenetic marks to enabling high-throughput applications. Biophysical Reports, 1 (2). 100028. ISSN 2667-0747 doi: 10.1016/j.bpr.2021.100028

Abstract/Summary

Epigenetic research holds great promise to advance our understanding of biomarkers and regulatory processes in health and disease. An increasing number of new approaches ranging from molecular to biophysical analyses enable identifying epigenetic changes on the level of a single gene or the whole epigenome. The aim of this review is to highlight how the field is shifting from completely molecular biology driven solutions to multi-disciplinary strategies including more reliance on biophysical analysis tools. Biophysics not only offers technical advancements in imaging or structure analysis, but also helps to explore regulatory interactions. New computational methods are also being developed to meet the demand of growing data volumes and their processing. Therefore, it is important to capture these new directions in epigenetics from a biophysical perspective and discuss current challenges as well as multiple applications of biophysical methods and tools. Specifically, we gradually introduce different biophysical research methods by first considering the DNA level information and eventually higher-order chromatin structures. Moreover, we aim to highlight that the incorporation of bioinformatics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence into biophysical analysis allows gaining new insights into complex epigenetic processes. The gained understanding has already proven useful in translational and clinical research providing better patient stratification options or new therapeutic insights. Together, this offers a better readiness to transform bench-top experiments into industrial high-throughput applications with a possibility to employ developed methods in clinical practice and diagnostics.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/100439
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy > School of Pharmacy > Division of Pharmacology
Publisher	Cell Press
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