Altered Mitochondrial DNA Methylation Patterns in Thrombosis

Abstract

DNA methylation being one of the chief controllers of gene expression has not only been the reason behind the initiation of a plethora of diseases like Cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, etc. Still, it is an active contributor to the pathophysiology of several cardiovascular diseases like coronary artery disease (CAD), Atherosclerosis, Stroke, Cardiomyopathy, etc. The role of nuclear DNA methylation in VTE has been studied earlier, but the comparison of methylation in both nuclear genes and mitochondrial genes in high altitude VTE (HA-VTE) and sea level VTE (SL-VTE) patients has not been studied in depth. Through this present study, DNA methylation patterns of mitochondrial encoded as well as nuclear-encoded mitochondrial genes of five high-altitude VTE patients and five sea-level VTE patients have been obtained. On comparing HA-VTE vs. SL-VTE methylation, one hundred and twenty hypermethylated genes and one hundred and thirty-eight hypomethylated genes were observed. Post gene enrichment and ontology study, the TCA cycle and NADH dehydrogenase were found to be the highly enriched pathways in both the study groups. Protein-protein interaction network using STRING pointed out the enriched pathway of L-2-hydroxyglutaric acid when both the gene sets were enriched. These results show the crucial role of mitochondrial DNA methylation in the pathophysiology of thrombosis and show great potential to study the role of mitochondria in thrombosis.