Research Paper|Volume 6, Issue 7|pp 564—574

WI-38 senescence is associated with global and site-specific hypomethylation

Corinne Sidler¹, Rafal Woycicki¹, Igor Kovalchuk¹, Olga Kovalchuk¹

¹Department of Biological Sciences, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, T1K 3M4, Canada

Received: June 14, 2014Accepted: July 16, 2014Published: July 19, 2014

Copyright: © 2014 Sidler et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Cellular senescence plays an important role in the age-dependent functional decline of organs and organ systems, as well as in age-related pathologies, such as cancer. Therefore, a better understanding of its underlying molecular mechanisms is crucial in the search for intervening measures. In this study, we considered the role of DNA methylation in senescence. We found that senescence is associated with global DNA hypomethylation, but also involves site-specific DNA hypo- and hypermethylation. In some cases, this differential methylation may affect gene expression and thereby modulate functional processes within cells. However, the majority of the CpG sites that were differentially methylated did not correspond with altered gene expression, suggesting that DNA methylation affects senescence by other means also, such as, for instance, genome stability.