LongTREC presents:
Profiling the epigenome using long-read sequencing
Tianyuan Liu, Ana Conesa
Every cell in our body carries the same DNA, yet a liver cell and a neuron behave very differently. Part of the explanation lies in the epigenome: chemical marks and packaging that act like switches and bookmarks, controlling which genes are turned on or off without changing the DNA sequence itself. Mapping these marks has traditionally required separate, indirect techniques that read DNA in short pieces.
Long-read sequencing from Oxford Nanopore and PacBio has changed this. These technologies read thousands of DNA letters at a time and can directly detect chemical marks, such as methylation, on each individual molecule. This review explains the experimental and computational strategies that use long reads to study how DNA is packaged, how accessible it is and where regulatory proteins bind, and how they compare with short-read methods. It also covers how long reads can detect alternative, newly made and actively translated RNA transcripts.
Finally, the authors show how different long-read methods can be combined into multi-omics studies that link the state of the DNA to gene activity. This gives researchers a roadmap for building a more complete picture of how genes are regulated.
Read the full text here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-024-02038-5
