Hypomethylation of human-specific family of LINE-1 retrotransposons in circulating DNA of lung cancer patients.

Circulating DNA has recently gained attention as a fast and non-invasive way to assess tumor biomarkers. Since hypomethylation of LINE-1 repetitive elements was described as one of the key hallmarks of tumorigenesis, we aimed to establish whether the methylation level of LINE-1 retrotransposons changes in cell-surface-bound fraction of circulating DNA (csbDNA) of lung cancer patients. Methylated CpG Island Recovery Assay (MIRA) coupled to qPCR-based quantitation was performed to assess integral methylation level of LINE-1 promoters in csbDNA of non-small cell lung cancer patients (n=56) and healthy controls (n=44).

Transcriptome analysis reveals novel regulatory mechanisms in a genome-reduced bacterium.

The avian bacterial pathogen Mycoplasma gallisepticum is a good model for systems studies due to small genome and simplicity of regulatory pathways. In this study, we used RNA-Seq and MS-based proteomics to accurately map coding sequences, transcription start sites (TSSs) and transcript 3'-ends (T3Es). We used obtained data to investigate roles of TSSs and T3Es in stress-induced transcriptional responses.