so, until recently (until now-ish?) bisulphite sequencing was kind of the gold standard tech for measuring DNA methylation which is bad cause bisulphite sequencing suuuucks, it's hard to do and not v accurate
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basically (and tbc I don't remember more than the basics) you chemically treat the DNA so that methylated nucleotides are converted from Cs to...i think Us? so when you sequence it they look different from normal
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what they did here is detect the "native methylation" ie detecting the methylation directly rather than indirectly they're able to do this using nanopore sequencing, which is the hottest thing in genomics in the last five years or so
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it uses protein pores to suck DNA through a membrane that has a voltage across it, so current is also flowing through the pore different DNA bases affect current differently, so they detect the sequence based on differences in... current or something like that
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this has a lot of cool consequences, one of which is that, unlike all other seq technologies im aware of, it is capable of analyzing native, completely unmodified DNA
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and since it is just measuring how the bases affect current flow, it's not limited to just sensing the standard 4 DNA bases that is, anything that affects how ions go through that pore can, in principle, be sensed, including chemical modifications like methylation
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so this is high coverage sequencing (60x, meaning at any point in the seq there are at least 60 reads covering that point) showing high resolution methylation (methylation of individual bases, not just regions) of a promoter of some random gene i dont care about
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high coverage just means high confidence in the results basically also the same thing that makes it capable of sequencing methylation makes it capable of sequencing RNA *directly* which is also hugely exciting
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yes ty i was glad to learn this
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Replying to @eigenrobot @FunkyDuffy
inshallah i will get me a nanopore sequencer soon mebbe even try this technique one day
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