DNA Hypomethylation Underlies Epigenetic Swapping between and Isoforms in Tumors.

Human tumors progress in part by accumulating epigenetic alterations, which include gains and losses of DNA methylation in different parts of the cancer cell genome. Recent work has revealed a link between these two opposite alterations by showing that DNA hypomethylation in tumors can induce the expression of transcripts that overlap downstream gene promoters and thereby induce their hypermethylation. Preliminary in silico evidence prompted us to investigate if this mechanism applies to the locus harboring , a gene that plays a central role in miRNA biogenesis and RNA interference.