medicine and health
Changing the Face of Early Cancer Detection: Better detection of PTMs could help cancer diagnostics By: Alisha Desai
Image Courtesy of Pexels.
T
he survival rate for individuals diagnosed with melanoma at the earliest stage of detection is 99 percent. This survival rate drops to a daunting 25 percent when the cancer is detected after spreading further throughout the body.1 Early detection could determine survival for the hundreds of thousands of individuals that get diagnosed with skin cancer every year. The field of epigenetics has played a significant role in establishing methods of early cancer diagnostics and UNC-Chapel Hill’s Dr. Marcey Waters is one of the scientists pioneering this groundbreaking research. Epigenetics is the study of changes in an organism caused by modified gene expression. Gene expression describes the process of “turning [a gene] on or off.” . Every cell in the human body, whether it is in the liver or the eye, contains an set of genetic material. However, only specific genes are turned on in certain cells allowing the liver and the eye to have vastly different functions. The field of epigenetics is new; in fact, researchers have only begun examining modified gene expressions within the past twenty years. Nevertheless, it has quickly become clear that gene expression can cause severe diseases such as cancer; learning about these modifications and being able to reverse them could have significant effects
in the diagnostics and healthcare industry. Dr. Marcey Waters specifically studies how methylation regulates gene expression. Methylation is the addition of a methyl group, CH3, to a compound. CH3 is a small organic molecule that is very prevalent in Figure 1: Image depicts DNA the body. When asked wrapped around histones, and then unwrapped, displaying the what drew Dr. Waters to bonds which hold DNA together. this field of research, she stated, “It’s remarkable that doing something as small as adding a methyl group on the right nitrogen can turn on a protein-protein interaction that controls gene expression.”2 Dr. Waters is particularly examining the methylation of lysine in histones, a type of protein in DNA. Lysine is one of the amino acids that makes up these histones. Dr. Waters is investigating lysine methylations by applying various biological and organic techniques. The lab is taking two approaches to research these methylations: studying the proteins involved in methylation and using organic
20
