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Methylation, aging, and pediatric acute lymphocytic leukemia

Leukemia volume 17, pages 2063–2064 (2003)Cite this article

TO THE EDITOR

In this issue of Leukemia, Gutierrez et al1 report an analysis of the methylation status of multiple promoter-associated CpG islands in pediatric acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). DNA methylation refers to the addition of a methyl group to the cytosine (C) in a cytosine guanine (CpG) pair. CpG pairs tend to cluster in areas known as CpG islands, and are usually located in, or near, the proximity of gene promoters, or in noncoding intergenic areas rich in highly repetitive DNA elements.2 In a non-neoplastic cell, the noncoding CpG islands are densely methylated, whereas most promoter-associated CpG islands are not methylated, except for imprinted genes or genes located in the X-chromosome in females. With malignant transformation, there is a switch in the global methylation pattern, by which hypomethylation of the noncoding regions and hypermethylation of promoter-associated CpG islands occurs.3 Aberrant methylation of promoter-associated CpG islands has attracted the interest of multiple research groups as it has been associated with gene silencing, a phenomenon that has oncogenic potential when it occurs on putative tumor suppressor genes. Indeed, aberrant methyation of these genes has been proposed to serve as a functional alternative to deletion or inactivating mutations of these genes.3

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  1. Department of Leukemia, University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

    G Garcia-Manero

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Garcia-Manero, G. Methylation, aging, and pediatric acute lymphocytic leukemia. Leukemia 17, 2063–2064 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2403117

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