Lecturer Developmental Biology and Cancer Research,Hebrew University Jerusalem,Prof. Asaf Hellman

Contact tamar.cohen@weizmann.ac.il

Abstract Studies over the last decade have identified differences in cancer gene expression that cannot be explained by coding sequences or promoter variations. The effect of transcriptional enhancers, on the other hand, remains unclear due to the lack of an effective way to link enhancers with their controlled genes. Recently, we discovered a class of inter-tumor, inter-patient DNA methylation variations in putative enhancers that predict changes in gene expression levels with much greater power than promoter or sequence analyses. I will describe our efforts to determine if changes in enhancer methylation form part of the genomic basis of cancer.