Patent Application: US-38759709-A

Abstract:
a method for quantifying cytosine methylation at a particular target cpg site in dna of a cell or organism , by performing bisulfite genomic sequencing , wherein a dna sample extracted from a cell or organism is treated with sodium bisulfite to convert cytosine to uracil and a selected fragment of this treated dna is amplified , performing a sequence analysis of the amplificate from an electropherogram wherein the area under a peak is measured in a plurality of peaks at either side of the target cpg site to determine the mean t area surrounding the site , subtracting the area of the t at the target cpg site from the mean t area wherein the difference is termed delta t , and calculating the proportional level of methylation as a quotient of delta t / t bar , or as a percent value , is presented .

Description:
having assigned such key roles to cytosine methylation , it is no wonder that there is a huge interest in developing procedures to analyze dna methylation , and especially to have the ability to do it rapidly , cost - effectively , accurately , and with great sensitivity . the potential for large scale screening for disease , identifying the causes , stages , prognoses and designing treatment modalities is very inviting . not surprising then , that there are many different approaches to quantitate dna methylation ( 10 - 18 , 47 ). leading the charge and popularity , many of these approaches involve bisulfite treatment of dna . these new methods have to be validated as to their effectiveness against well - known and respected methods in existence . provided herein and below are examples of such verification of the new method that is the subject of this invention . dna was extracted from mouse tissues using an epicentre masterpure dna purification kit ( epicentre biotechnologies , madison , wis .) according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s recommendations with minor modifications . inventor added a phenol ( amresco , solon ohio ) extraction step and a 1 - bromo - 3 - chloropropane ( molecular research center , inc . cincinnati , ohio ) extraction step just prior to isopropanol precipitation . purified dna was washed with tris - edta buffer in montage centrifugal filters ( millipore , bedford , mass .). in some cases dna was methylated in vitro with sssi ( cpg ) methylase according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s instructions ( new england biolabs inc , ipswich , mass .) except that dna was washed in a centrifugal filter and reacted a second time ( 21 ) to assure complete methylation . dna was sodium - bisulfite modified with an epitect kit ( qiagen , valencia , calif .) according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s instructions . for each bisulfate modification inventor used 300 ng of dna . inventor stored bisulfite - treated dna at − 20 ° c . pcr was performed using a hot star taq dna polymerase kit ( qiagen , valencia , calif .). each 25 ul pcr reaction included 0 . 65 units of hot star taq polymerase , 0 . 22 mm promega dntp mix ( promega , madison , wis . ), and 0 . 8 um of each primer . the sequences amplified were from the mouse avy allele of agouti ( 38 ) ( genbank ar302985 ). bisulfite modified genomic dna was amplified by nested pcr using two sets of primers for the avy allele similar to that described by rakyan et al . ( 39 ). the first pcr reaction was carried out with 10 ng of dna using the amplification profile : 1 cycle at 80 ° c . for 1 min , 1 cycle at 94 ° c . for 1 min ; 2 cycles at ( 95 ° c . for 1 min , 64 ° c . for 1 min , 72 ° c . for 1 min ); 2 cycles at ( 95 ° c . for 1 min , 63 ° c . for 1 min , 72 ° c . for 1 min ); 2 cycles at ( 95 ° c . for 1 min , 62 ° c . for 1 min , 72 ° c . for 1 min ); 2 cycles at ( 95 ° c . for 1 min , 61 ° c . for 1 min , 72 ° c . for 1 min ); 40 cycles at ( 95 ° c . for 1 min , 60 ° c . for 1 min , 72 ° c . for 1 min ); 72 ° c . for 5 min and cooling to 4 ° c . the forward primer 5 ′- tgcgataaagttttatttttat - 3 ′ ( seq id no 1 ) and reverse primer 5 ′- gttgtgtttcgttttgtttttttttt - 3 ′ ( seq id no 2 ) used for the first reaction were designed using methprimer web software ( 40 ) ( http :// www . urogene . org / methprimer /). a second , nested , pcr was then performed on 1 ul of the amplificate using the upstream and downstream avy primers ( 372 - bp pcr product ) or the upstream and internal avy primers ( 307 - bp pcr product ) of rakyan et al . ( 39 ) with the following cycling conditions : 1 cycle at 80 ° c . for 1 minute , 1 cycle at 94 ° c . for 1 min ; 2 cycles at ( 95 ° c . for 1 min , 63 ° c . for 1 min , 72 ° c . for 1 min ); 2 cycles at ( 95 ° c . for 1 min , 62 ° c . for 1 min , 72 ° c . for 1 min ); 2 cycles at ( 95 ° c . for 1 min , 61 ° c . for 1 min , 72 ° c . for 1 min ); 2 cycles at ( 95 ° c . for 1 min , 60 ° c . for 1 min , 72 ° c . for 1 min ); 40 cycles at ( 95 ° c . for 1 min , 59 ° c . for 1 min , 72 ° c . for 1 min ); 72 ° c . for 5 min and cooling to 4 ° c . the pcr products were electrophoresed through a 2 % agarose gel , stained with ethidium bromide , and digitally imaged under uv light using a transilluminator , video camera and labworks image acquisition and analysis software ( ultra - violet products , upland calif .). to eliminate primers and dntps , inventor treated pcr products with exonuclease i ( epicentre , madison wis .) and shrimp alkaline phosphatase ( roche , nutley , n . j .) ( 41 ) at 37 ° c . for 60 min followed by 85 ° c . for 15 min . inventor then concentrated and washed these using montage centrifugal filters ( millipore , bedford , mass .) according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s recommendations . the pcr products were sequenced using the nested upstream primer ( avy forward primer ) ( 39 ) at the uams dna sequencing core facility using a model 3100 genetic analyzer ( applied biosystems , foster city , calif .) and a big dye terminator sequencing kit . for cobra analysis ( 32 , 33 ) pcr products were digested with 20 units of restriction enzyme taqalphal ( tcga ), hpych4iv ( acgt ), or acil ( ggcg ) ( new england biolabs , ipswich , mass .). each of these enzymes has just one site in the bisulfite - converted sequence when the original genomic sequence was methylated , and no site in the bisulfite - converted sequence when the original genomic sequence was unmethylated . for digestion , a 10 - to - 20 fold excess of enzyme was used for two hours , but digestion was otherwise according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s instructions . the digested pcr products were separated by gel electrophoresis using 3 % genepure high resolution agarose ( isc bioexpress , kaysville , utah ) and stained with ethidium bromide . gels were imaged as described earlier and the images saved as tiff files . for cobra electrophoresis , the amount of digest analyzed was kept low so that the bands were in a gray level ( in an approximately linear range ) but high enough that they gave a substantial signal . the undigested band and the largest - size digested band were used to quantify methylation because the smaller - size digest bands sometimes did not give a substantial signal . even at extremes of methylation ( near 0 or 100 %), at least one band , the undigested or the largest digested band , gave a substantial signal . digital images were scanned with scion image software ( scion corporation , frederick , md ., http :// www . scioncorp . com / pages / scion_image_windows . htm ) to measure density . density ratios of a major digested band to the undigested band were used to calculate the relative copy numbers of fragments and subsequently the percent methylation ( 21 , 33 ). the ab1 files from sequencing were processed using phred ( 42 , 43 ) ( http :// www . phrap . org /) or bioedit ( http :// www . mbio . ncsu . edu / bioedit / bioedit . html ). sequences were not used if they had substantial artifacts e . g . if more than one t ( that had not been a c of a cpg prior to bisulfite ) in the region used to quantify methylation showed more than 10 % c . the phred output or bioedit trace value output were used to read and quantify primary and secondary peaks in the electropherograms . calculations were performed in excel ( microsoft , redmond , wash .). peak areas were determined by summing peak trace values . phred automatically sums the trace values of peaks from baseline ( 42 ) and inventor did the same with trace values from bioedit after pasting them into excel spreadsheets . virtually all baselines between peaks had one or more trace values of zero which allows peak area determination by simple summing of peak trace values . dna methylation levels were quantified from sequencing electropherogram trace values using the following algorithm that inventor calls “ mquant .” second , the mean t area ( t bar ) from 10 ts surrounding the target cpg site was determined . is used to calculate t bar were at least 10 times the area of their secondary base ( c , g or a ). in inventor &# 39 ; s electropherograms , secondary bases were mainly sequencing noise . thus , the ts used to calculate t bar had a t signal - to - noise ratio of 10 or better with respect to their secondary peak . an equal number of t &# 39 ; s from each side of the target cpg ( i . e . 5 on each side ) were used . third , the area of the t at the target cpg site was subtracted from t bar to yield delta t ( i . e . t bar − cpg t = delta t ). fourth , the level of methylation on the site was calculated as the proportion , ( delta t )/( t bar ), or the percentage , 100 ×( delta t )/( t bar ). this algorithm can be generalized such that : in place of the target cpg site , a target polymorphic site is chosen ; in place of cytosine , cytidine or deoxycytidine , nucleotide 1 ( n1 ) is used ; and in place of thymine , thymidine or deoxythymidine , nucleotide 2 ( n2 ) is used . in place of secondary base ( c , g or a ), any secondary base ( c , g , a , t , u or other ) is used . in place of the level or percentage of methylation , the level or percentage of nucleotide 1 ( n1 ) is used . percents methylation by the mquant and cobra methods were compared via regression plots using origin ( originlab , northhampton , mass .) and via bland - altman plots using excel ( microsoft , redmond , wash .). regression was used to calculate slopes , intercepts , and coefficients of correlation between methods , whereas bland - altman plots ( 44 , 45 ) were used to determine means and standard deviations ( sds ) of the difference in percents methylation by each method . bland - altman 95 % limits of agreement ( 95 % loa &# 39 ; s ) were calculated as the mean ± 2sds of the difference in percents methylation by each method , and indicate the limits between which ˜ 95 % of the difference in percents methylation would be expected to fall under a normal distribution . in some cases inventor did multiple analyses of single amplificates for which inventor determined sd , the root mean square error ( rmse ) and the coefficient of variation ( cv ) as measures of run - to - run variation within each experiment . the examples as described herein are intended to further illustrate the present invention and are not intended to limit the invention in any way . inventor has developed a method to quantify dna methylation from bgs electropherograms . this method uses and extends previously published methods of sequence analysis ( 22 , 42 , 43 , 46 ) so that inventor can readily quantify the methylation at a particular site using the data from four - dye - trace electropherograms from fluorescent dye terminator sequencing . this allows inventor to quantify the percent methylation of numerous cpg sites in an electrophoretogram and to validate these levels at specific sites using cobra assays ( 33 ). this method can greatly speed determinations of dna methylation . cobra distinguishes between c and t bases using sequence specific restriction enzymes as measured by the intensities of bands on a gel after dna fragments are separated by electrophoresis ( 32 , 33 ). bgs , as used here , distinguishes between c and t bases by different fluorescent dyes on each base at specific positions after separation by capillary electrophoresis . at a target cpg site , t is measured directly and c is measured indirectly as the mean intensity of surrounding ts minus the intensity of t at the target site ( which is shared by c and t ). inventor used bisulfite pcr amplificates from 45 independent dna samples containing sites with dna methylation levels that varied between 0 and 100 %. with these , inventor compared the bisulfite - based techniques of cobra with a quantitative version of bgs that inventor calls mquant . the agouti allele region inventor used contains 9 cpgs that can be sequenced reliably with the primer sets used . three of these cpgs are in restriction sites , and were analyzed by both cobra and mquant . a total of 61 cobra and 61 mquant determinations were made ( from 45 pcr amplificates ) to test for agreement between cobra and mquant . each cobra and corresponding mquant was performed on the same bisulfite pcr amplificate . fig1 shows a cobra gel for measuring methylation of an hpych4iv site ( acgt ) and the corresponding site in the sequencing electropherogram . in this and other cobra gels , the amounts of digest loaded were in a moderate range so that the bands were at a gray level ( in an approximately linear range ) and still gave a substantial signal . fig2 a is a regression plot of cobra values versus electropherogram values at the acgt site , and shows a high correlation ( 0 . 95 ) between values measured by the two methods . fig2 b is a bland - altman plot for this same data . the mean ( sd ) difference between cobra and mquant values for the hpych4iv site was + 0 . 72 % ( 7 . 6 %), indicating little evidence for bias ( p = 0 . 68 ) between methods . the outside horizontal lines of fig2 b show the bland - altman 95 % loa &# 39 ; s , which are (− 14 . 4 %, + 15 . 9 %) for the acgt site . the mean values of percent methylation for cobra and mquant were 31 . 6 % and 32 . 4 % respectively . overall , these results show that the two methods tend to agree well at the hpych4iv site . fig3 through 4b show analogous results for the taqalphal site ( tcga ). the correlation between methylation levels measured by the two methods was somewhat lower ( 0 . 91 ). the mean ( sd ) difference between values measured by cobra versus mquant was − 8 . 9 % ( 10 . 3 %), indicating statistically significant evidence ( p & lt ; 0 . 0001 ) of a bias toward lower values as measured by mquant compared to cobra . the 95 % loa &# 39 ; s were (− 29 . 5 %, + 11 . 7 %) for the tcga site . the mean values of percent methylation for cobra and mquant were 61 % and 52 % respectively . although the bias was statistically significant at the taqalphal site , it was nevertheless under 10 % methylation . fig5 through 6b show analogous results for the acil sites ( gcgg ). the correlation between methylation levels measured by the two methods was high ( 0 . 98 ). the mean ( sd ) difference between values measured by cobra versus mquant was 1 . 6 % ( 8 . 1 %), indicating little evidence for bias ( p = 0 . 48 ) between methods . the 95 % loa &# 39 ; s were (− 14 . 6 %, + 17 . 8 %) for the gcgg site . the mean values of percent methylation for cobra and mquant were 61 % and 63 % respectively . overall , these results show that the two methods tend to agree well at the acil site . inventor made estimates of c to t conversion levels and general noise levels in the electropherograms . first , inventor measured the c level under ts from noncpg cs . these levels were small and indicated a conversion rate of & gt ; 93 % to 97 %. next , inventor measured the levels of other bases ( g and a ) under ts from noncpg cs . levels of g and a were similar to those of c indicating that a substantial amount of c level may come from sequencing noise and not from incomplete c to t conversion . in any case , c to t conversion levels appear to be between 93 and 100 %. inventor tested the number of ts used to calculate t bar on the calculated dna methylation level ( data not shown ) and on correlations with cobra ( table 1 ). inventor tested the use of 2 ts ( one on each side ), 4 ts ( two on each side ) and so on , up to 20 ts ( 10 on each side ). in all cases r was & gt ; 0 . 90 and all correlations were highly significant ( 10 - 12 & lt ; p & lt ; 10 - 7 ). for acil and taqalphal sites the number of ts between 2 and 20 had little effect on r ( 0 . 97 to 0 . 98 and 0 . 90 to 0 . 92 respectively ). for hpych4iv sites r was 0 . 91 using 2 or 4 ts and 0 . 93 to 0 . 95 using 8 to 20 ts . the data shown in fig2 a , 4 a and 6 a is a large collection of single cobra and mquant determinations from a large number of amplificates . additionally , to assess run - to - run reproducibility , ten amplificates were subsampled 3 to 5 times and assayed by both methods . the resulting data was analyzed statistically via one - way anova on the parent amplificates in order to obtain the anova root mean - square error ( rmse ), which estimates the common standard deviation ( sd ) of the amplificate replications about their respective mean values . for cobra , rmses were 4 . 3 %, 1 . 5 % and 1 . 0 % for hpy , taq and aci , respectively . for mquant , rmses were 4 . 5 %, 1 . 8 % and 1 . 6 % for hpy , taq and aci , respectively . for the three sites combined , cobra rmse was 2 . 7 % and mquant rmse was 3 . 0 %. these estimates of sd are low for most methylation levels . for example , an sd of 3 . 0 % is reasonable for a measured methylation level of 90 %, 50 % or even 20 %. only when methylation levels were very low ( e . g . less than 10 %) was the sd a substantial proportion of the measured methylation level . overall , sds were low , indicating that each method is highly reproducible . both methods measured the midrange as well as extremes of methylation . on the three sites studied by both cobra and mquant , in vitro methylated dna gave 90 to 100 % methylation by both methods . mquant measures of methylation in 9 cpgs in the avy allele of in vitro methylated dna gave values from 90 to 98 % with an average of 95 %+/− 2 %. on the other extreme , inventor observed nine instances of cpg sites with less than 10 % methylation by both cobra and mquant . mquant also works if an odd number of ts are used and / or if the number of ts used are based on which are closest rather than an equal number on each side . for example , in a case where 10 ts arranged 5 on each side give a percent methylation of 92 . 5 using instead the first ( closest ) 5 ts gave 92 . 7 %, the first ( closest ) 6 ts gave 92 . 7 %, and the first ( closest ) 10 ts gave 92 . 5 %. in these , 5 ts were 3 upstream and 2 downstream , 6 ts were 4 upstream and 2 downstream , and 10 ts were 6 upstream and 4 downstream . in another example , where 10 ts arranged 5 on each side give a percent methylation of − 1 . 3 % using instead the first ( closest ) 5 ts gave − 3 . 2 %, the first ( closest ) 6 ts gave − 0 . 8 %, the first ( closest ) 9 ts gave − 0 . 1 %, the first ( closest ) 10 ts gave − 3 . 0 %, the first ( closest ) 15 ts gave − 6 . 5 %, and the first ( closest ) 16 ts gave − 5 . 8 %. in these , the arrangements of ts upstream and downstream were asymmetrical . in another example , where 10 ts arranged 5 on each side give a percent methylation of 33 . 0 % using instead the first ( closest ) 5 ts gave 36 . 3 %, the first ( closest ) 6 ts gave − 38 . 0 %, the first ( closest ) 9 ts gave 32 . 3 %, and the first ( closest ) 10 ts gave 31 . 4 %. in these , the arrangements of ts upstream and downstream were asymmetrical . this method was applied to several mouse sequences and several human sequences . one example of each and their quantification are shown in fig7 and 8 and tables 2 and 3 . fig7 deals with mouse peg 10 gene sequence ( seq id no 10 ). fig8 shows human tert gene sequence ( seq id no 17 ). an electropherogram of bisulfite treated and pcr amplified mouse peg 10 gene ( 47 ) is shown in fig7 . this gene is imprinted and has intermediate levels of methylation on many cpg sites . peg 10 primers were forward : 5 ′- gtaaagtgattggttttgtatttttaagtg - 3 ′ ( seq id no 3 ) and reverse : 5 ′- ttaattactctcctacaactttccaaatt - 3 ′ ( seq id no 4 ). table 2 shows data related to the quantification of methylation on the peg10 gene as shown in fig7 . in particular the column labeled proportion methylc shows the proportion of methylation on sites and the column labeled sequence gives the sequence context in fig7 used to locate the methylated cpg site . an electropherogram of bisulfite treated and pcr amplified human telomerase reverse transcriptase gene ( tert ) ( 48 ) is shown in fig8 . in some cell types the gene has high levels of methylation on multiple cpg sites . tert primers used were : forward , 5 ′- gtttttgtattttgggag - 3 ′ ( seq id no 11 ) and reverse , 5 ′- aatccactaaaaaccc - 3 ′ ( seq id no 12 ). table 3 shows data related to the quantification of four sites of methylation on the human tert gene as shown in fig8 . in particular , the column labeled proportion methylc shows the proportion of methylation on sites and the column labeled sequence gives the sequence context in fig8 used to locate each methylated cpg site . the above mentioned examples define a new method to quantify dna methylation from bgs four - dye - trace electropherograms . this method uses data from the thymine trace almost exclusively and thus avoids any complications due to independent normalization of a , g , c and t peaks in four - dye - trace electropherograms ( 26 ). this method uses available , established software to read electropherograms ( phred and bioedit ). inventor &# 39 ; s method analyzes sites independently and uses the same number of non - cpg ts on either side of the analyzed site . inventor first attempted a similar quantification using a mean of most or all non - cpg ts in electropherograms , but this gave poor results , and simple inspection of the numbers in the phred output revealed that the mean was less than most of the non - cpg ts early in the electropherogram and that the mean was greater than nearly all of the non - cpg t &# 39 ; s late in the electropherogram ( data not shown ). the areas ( and heights ) of thymine peaks gradually decline over most electropherograms and this is likely responsible for this effect . by taking the same number of ts on either side of the analyzed cpg an effect of this gradual peak area decline over the electropherogram is obviated . the peak areas ( and heights ) also vary locally so that it is important to average two or more to get a value for 100 % t . fitting methods such as linear regression on neighboring t peaks could probably be used with similar effect . any cpg site can have between 0 and 100 % methylation . in the tcga ( taqalphal ) site cobra and mquant differences are statistically significant yet the mean values are still within 10 % methylation of each other . one possible explanation involves consistent differences readily observed in t peak areas and heights in electropherograms . certain patterns , such as three successive ts in a particular part of a sequence showing a gradual decline in height , are reproducible in multiple sequencings . this indicates that if a particular t derived from the c of a cpg is consistently above average height ( and area ) in its region of the sequence , the average methylation level measured by mquant will be low . similarly , if the particular t were consistently below average height ( and area ) in its region the average methylation level measured by mquant would be high . fortunately , differences that may be attributable to this effect at the taqalphal site are small . the acgt ( hpych4iv ) site gave nearly identical mean methylation values by cobra and mquant as did the gcgg ( acil ) site . these mean values were within 2 % methylation of each other . inventor agrees with other groups ( 22 , 26 ) that bgs probably has limitations to quantification due to incomplete c - to - u conversion and imperfect specificity for only unmethylated c &# 39 ; s . however , inventor finds good agreement with the established cobra method when inventor quantifies methylation in bisulfite electropherograms by averaging t &# 39 ; s on both sides of the target cpg and subtracting the t signal at the cpg site from this average t . to measure very high levels of methylation , e . g . 90 % to 100 %, it is necessary that the signal - to - noise ratio be very high , so that the average noncpg t value is high and the noise at the cpg site is very low . for example , a noise level of 10 % in the t trace at a cpg site leaves the maximum methylation detectable at 90 % even if the dna is actually 100 % methylated . inventor made estimates of likely conversion levels and finds them to be high ( 93 to 100 %). noise levels in sequencing and pcr may be higher than c signals due to incomplete c to t conversion . because it relies on nearby ts to calculate methylation levels at cpgs , the mquant method may not work as well in parts of some dense cpg islands , such as those of tumor suppressor genes , where there are few ( or no ) nearby ts . in contrast , cobra and some other methods would not be expected to show effects of nearby t density and thus cobra may be a method of choice for such sequences . mquant also relies on a high bisulfite conversion level and high quality sequencing traces which may not always be available . for example , the algorithm of lewin et al . ( 26 ) corrects for bisulfite conversion levels and aligns sequences and thus can work with sequencing traces that may not be useful with mquant . mquant has several advantages over cobra . mquant quantifies methylation on multiple independent cpg sites from analysis of a single sequencing run in contrast , cobra usually analyzes the methylation of just one cpg site at a time . in most sequences only a minority of cpg sites are part of a restriction site as required for cobra analysis . mquant is amenable to robotic or manual high throughput methods . for example , most or all of the steps could be done in a 96 well format up until the sequencing capillary electrophoresis which is also available in a 96 capillary format . in contrast , cobra is generally done by gel electrophoresis with manual imaging and analysis of gels . these cobra methods are laborious and , on average , probably less reliable than automated sequencing by capillary electrophoresis and fluorescent dye detection . mquant also uses less than half of the dna needed for one cobra analysis . mquant works well over the entire range of methylation levels making it suitable for analyse associated with imprinting . inventor obtained good overall correlations between mquant and cobra including levels near 0 % and 100 % methylation . mquant and cobra both gave high methylation levels ( 90 to 98 %) with in vitro methylated dna . there are always trace values for all four bases ( including t ) in electropherograms and there is always background noise in cobra gel scans . thus no measures gave a value of 100 %. inventor &# 39 ; s use of the thymine trace data to quantify methylation has similarities to the method of dikow et al . ( 22 ), but also differs in several ways . like mquant the dikow algorithm can quantify from just the t trace values . however , the dikow algorithm uses all ts in a region without a way of choosing those well suited to quantify at a particular cpg site . in other words , they choose one set of ts for quantification at multiple cpg sites whereas mquant uses sets of ts tailored to each cpg site . in mquant each cpg uses a different set of ts from every other cpg ( unless two or more cpgs happen to have no ts between them ). dikow et al . read electropherograms with applied biosystems genescan software , whereas inventor used phred and bioedit . dikow et al . report their maximum mean signal to be just over 80 % methylation in dna where they measured nearly 100 % methylation by their established methylation - specific multiplex ligation - dependent probe amplification ( ms - mlpa ) method . as discussed above , inventor is able to read methylation levels of 90 to 98 % from in vitro methylated dna . lewin et al . ( 26 ) use both the c and t trace values in a sophisticated but complex algorithm that ultimately normalizes the c and t traces to each other . they then use both the c and t trace data to calculate the level of methylation at each cpg . the lewin algorithm also corrects for bisulfite conversion levels and aligns sequences . in contrast , mquant quantifies methylation levels using only the t trace and thus does not require normalization or alignment . however , inventor mainly uses sequences that are well aligned and that have high bisulfite conversion levels . the lewin algorithm correction and alignment features allow it to use sequences that inventor might reject for mquant . inventor tested the mquant method using different numbers of surrounding nontarget ts ( 2 to 20 ) on either side of the target t / cpg . inventor found few differences , although correlations with cobra were slightly higher when using a larger number of ts ( 6 to 20 ). most methods to quantify methylation target only a few sites , require laborious , specialized laboratory techniques , or require highly specialized instrumentation . inventor used a specialized laboratory technique , cobra , on three short sequences to show a very high correlation with the mquant method . this method uses widely available techniques and instrumentation and should be useful in many laboratories to quantify dna methylation levels . while the present invention has now been described in terms of certain preferred embodiments , and exemplified with respect thereto , one skilled in the art will readily appreciate that various modifications , changes , omissions and substitutions may be made without departing from the spirit thereof . it is intended , therefore , that the present invention be limited solely by the scope of the following claims . 2 . hotchkiss r d : the quantitative separation of purines , pyrimidines , and nucleosides by paper chromatography . j biol chem 1948 , 175 : 315 - 332 3 . bird a : the essentials of dna methylation . cell 1992 , 70 : 5 - 8 4 . feinberg a p : the epigenetics of cancer etiology . semin cancer biol 2004 , 14 : 427 - 432 5 . murrell a , rakyan v k , beck s : from genome to epigenome . hum mol genet 2005 , 14 : r3 - r10 6 . fuks f : dna methylation and histone modifications : teaming up to silence genes . curr opin genet dev 2005 , 15 : 490 - 495 7 . rodenhiser o , mann m : epigenetics and human disease : translating basic biology into clinical applications . can med assoc j 2006 , 174 : 341 - 348 8 . jiang y h , bressler j , beaudet a l : epigenetics and human disease . annu rev genomics hum genet 2004 , 5 : 479 - 510 9 . novik k l , nimmrich i , genc b , maier s , piepenbrock c , olek a , beck s : epigenomics : genome - wide study of methylation phenomena . curr issues mol biol 2002 , 4 : 111 - 128 10 . ogino s , kawasaki t , brahmandam m , cantor m , kirkner g j , spiegelman d , makrigiorgos g m , weisenberger d j , laird p w , loda m , fuchs c s : precision and performance characteristics of sodium bisulfite conversion and real - time pcr ( methylight ) for quantitative dna methylation analysis . j mol diagn 2006 , 8 : 209 - 217 11 . cooney , c . a . 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