DNA methylation plays a crucial role in epigenetic gene regulation in normal development and disease pathogenesis. Efficient and accurate quantification of DNA methylation at single-base resolution can greatly improve knowledge of disease mechanisms and be utilized to identify potential biomarkers. DNA methylation is meaningful in some genomic contexts such as CpG islands, which are found in 60% of gene promoters, and the function of DNA methylation is likely to vary depending on context. Creative BioMart provides reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) that allows for the assessment of DNA methylation in particular genomic contexts across the genome.
What Is Reduced Representation Bisulfite Sequencing?
Reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) is a cost-effective technique for quantification of genome-wide DNA methylation at single-base resolution. It is also a DNA methylation analysis solution based on bisulfite sequencing. In this method, CpG regions are enriched with restriction endonucleases that are insensitive to methylation, thereby reducing the amount of sequencing required while capturing most promoters and other related genome regions. RRBS allows researchers to select desired genomic contexts by choosing the density of CpG loci in the DNA regions that are examined. RRBS may be the preferred method when large numbers of samples need to be analyzed. RRBS brings down the scale and cost of whole-genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) by only sequencing a reduced, representative sample of the entire genome.
