Investigation of brain from infants with child abuse regarding to morphological change and epigenetic change such as DNA methylation.

这项研究的目的是调查虐待儿童的婴儿的大脑的形态变化和表观遗传学变化，如DNA甲基化。在尸检、肉眼检查和脑组织显微镜检查之前，用尸检CT观察脑组织的形态变化。作为对照，研究人员使用了猝死或意外死亡病例的大脑。在受影响的人和对照组之间，大脑的形态有任何显著的差异。接下来，为了研究大脑中的DNA甲基化，进行了初步的实验。我们证明，从石蜡中制备的DNA可以进行甲基化特异的PCR扩增。甲醛固定后的包埋脑组织。然而，评估DNA甲基化的程度是无效的。因此，我们需要一种方法来发现一种基因，该基因的甲基化与婴儿的压力显著相关。因此，我们正在开发一种方法，通过甲基化DNA与甲基化结合区域1蛋白的沉淀，然后测序来丰富甲基化DNA。未来，有可能通过这种方法确定甲基化与婴儿压力显著相关的基因。

The purpose of this study is to investigate brain from infants with child abuse regarding to morphological change and epigenetic change such as DNA methylation. Morphological change of the brain was investigated using postmortem CT prior to autopsy, naked eye examination and microscopic examination of the brain tissue. As control, brains were used from cases of sudden or unexpected death. There was any significant morphological difference in brains between the affected person and controls. Next, to investigate DNA methylation in brains, preliminary experiments were carried out. We demonstrated that methylation specific PCR amplification could be carried out using DNA prepared from the paraffin. embedded brain tissues which had been fixed by formaldehyde. However, it was invalid to evaluate the extent of DNA methylation. Therefore, we need a method to discover a gene of which methylation is significantly associated with stress in infants. Thus, we are developing a method for enrichment of methylated DNA using precipitation of methylated DNA with methylation binding domain 1 protein, followed by sequencing. In future, it might be possible to identify a gene of which methylation is significantly associated with stress in infants by the method.