Leah Spontaneo

A Correlation of Cpg Islands, Motifs and Sequence Variants: a Study of the Human Genome Leah Spontaneo

CpG islands are important regions in DNA. They usually appear at the 5? end of genes containing GC-rich dinucleotides. When DNA methylation occurs, gene regulation is affected and it sometimes leads to carcinogenesis. We propose a new detection program using a hidden-markov model alongside the Viterbi algorithm. This solution provides a graphical user interface not seen in many of the other CGI detection programs and we unify the detection and analysis under one program to allow researchers to scan a genetic sequence, detect the significant CGIs, and analyze the sequence once the scan is complete for any noteworthy findings. Developing this new tool for the community using powerful algorithms has shown that combining analysis with CGI detection will improve the continued research within the field of epigenetics.