Can I reliably detect intermediately methylated DNA with this technology?
Yes. The total, hypermethylated (> 60 percent methylated), and unmethylated (0 percent methylated) amounts of DNA in the sample are each directly and reliably detected. The total amount of DNA minus the hypermethylated and unmethylated DNA amounts yields the amount of intermediately methylated DNA (between 0 and 60 percent methylated). Only bisulfite sequencing, and no other DNA methylation detection method, has this same capability. Lower extents of hypermethylation have increasingly been correlated with biological phenotypes when coincident with larger extents of intermediate methylation.
