1School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308 Australia.
2Centre for Information Based Medicine, Hunter Medical Research Institute, New Lambton Heights, NSW 2305 Australia.
Clin Epigenetics. 2018 Feb 14;10:22. doi: 10.1186/s13148-018-0455-6. eCollection 2018.
DNA methylation is a dynamic epigenetic mechanism. Researchers aiming to assess archived DNA samples are expressing concern about the effect of technical factors on methylation, as this may confound results. We reviewed recent reports examining this issue in blood samples and concluded that variation in collection, storage, and processing of blood DNA confers negligible effects on both global methylation and methylation status of specific genes. These results are concordant with studies that have investigated the effect of sample storage and processing on methylation in other tissues, such as tumour, sperm, and placenta samples.
DNA 甲基化是一种动态的表观遗传机制。研究人员旨在评估存档的 DNA 样本，他们对技术因素对甲基化的影响表示关注，因为这可能会使结果复杂化。我们回顾了最近检查血液样本中这个问题的报告，并得出结论，血液 DNA 的收集、储存和处理方式的变化对整体甲基化和特定基因的甲基化状态几乎没有影响。这些结果与研究其他组织（如肿瘤、精子和胎盘样本）中样本储存和处理对甲基化影响的研究结果一致。
