DNA co-methylation analysis of lincRNAs across nine cancer types reveals novel potential epigenetic biomarkers in cancer.

The potential functions and prognostic value of lincRNAs with co-methylation events are explored in 9 cancer types. Here, we evaluated the co-methylation events in promoter and gene-body regions between two lincRNAs across 9 cancer types by constructing a systematic biological framework. The co-methylation events in both promoter and gene-body regions tended to be highly cancer specific. Patient samples could be separated by tumor and normal types according to the eigengenes of universal co-methylation clusters. Functional enrichment results revealed the lincRNAs that brought promoter and gene-body co-methylation events that affected cancer progress through participating in different pathways and could serve as potential prognostic biomarkers. The study provides new insight into the epigenetic regulation in cancer and leads to a potential new direction for epigenetic biomarker discovery.