Researchers use an algorithmic approach to understanding how cancer changes from histone markers

Scientists from EPFL and UNIL have used a new algorithmic approach to cancer cells to acquire knowledge and how histone marker changes (H3K27AC) and induce the repositioning of chromatin regions in the core cellular. Scientists have also described how changes to local contacts between regulatory elements called improvements and promoters influence oncogene expression. Research attempts to acquire a new understanding of cancer and potential methods to combat it.

Cancer is an extremely complex disease that is part of the research on so difficult cancer. To better understand cancer, researchers focus on the genome. If they can understand what is happening at DNA, scientists hope that it would be possible to treat and completely prevent cancers in the future. The researchers in this project made a breakthrough discovery regarding essential genetic aberration that occurs in cancer.

The team used a new method based on algorithms to study the reorganization of the cancer cells of the 3D structure of the DNA to increase the activity of the genes favoring cancer called oncogenes. Scientists have focused on four chromosomes where DNA is packed inside the cell and the way the chromosomes are organized within the small limits of the cell core. In the normal DNA, each cell carries 23 chromosomes and two copies for each chromosome. However, the structure and organization of chromosomes change from cancer cells.

Scientists say that an element of a copy of the chromosome 8 can be attached to a copy of the chromosome 14 in a cancer cell. Chromosomes can also take a more relaxed or compact structure based on chemical changes called epigenetic marks. Scientists in this project have studied how specific epigenetic marking changes modify chromosome structures and gene expression promoting tumor growth called oncogenes.

The genetic algorithm approach used by the team is called Calder and followed how the genomic regions are positioned from each other inside the core. The team used the approach to compare the spatial organization of the genome in more than 100 samples. Calder has followed the chromatin regions that “displaced” of a nucleus area to another due to the modification of epigenetic marks. The teams found that in lymphoma cells, specific epigenetic modifications cause that chromatin regions are repositioned in different core areas leading to new local interactions that activate the expression of oncogenes.