DNA methylation & cancer epigenetics. Tweets are my own. I tend to stick to science.
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
Joined November 2012
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Very excited to be part of this massive effort to characterize cancer models, revealing strong epigenetic concordance between primary tumors and matched cancer models. rdcu.be/fx3I3
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
It is our distinct honor to announce that Dr. Jonathan D. Licht has been selected as the next president and chief scientific officer of Van Andel Institute.
Read more: vai.org/article/eminent-phys…
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
It’s finally here! The #EpiSociety2025 International Conference kicks off tomorrow at 1 PM! @ShilatifardLab @CKadoch @manoliskellis @peterwlaird @berger_lab @LauberthLab @yuefeng_1 @LuWangLab @BradEBernstein @JoeEcker
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
Thank you to everyone who made #EpiSociety2025 an unforgettable and inspiring gathering of the epigenetics community! @CKadoch @berger_lab @LauberthLab @yuefeng_1 @manoliskellis @BradEBernstein @ShilatifardLab @peterwlaird @sarma_lab @epicypher @NorthwesternMed @NU_BMG_SQE
Our paper on deep single-cell DNA methylation analysis is out in Nature Communications rdcu.be/evfJm. Super elegant work by Nathan Spix describing replication dynamics, X-inactivation, and cell lineage identification.
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
Origins of DNA Methylation Alterations in Cancer: Peter W. Laird addressed this topic in a keynote lecture at the AACR Special Conference on DNA Methylation, Clonal Hematopoiesis, and Cancer.
#AACRmethylation25 @peterwlaird
Thrilled to share the results @Cancer_Cell of years of hard work to develop classifiers for all major TCGA cancer subtypes, enabling assessment of differential drug response among cancer subtypes in clinical trials. cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltex…
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
Online Now: DNA hypomethylation promotes UHRF1-and SUV39H1/H2-dependent crosstalk between H3K18ub and H3K9me3 to reinforce heterochromatin states dlvr.it/TGZ732
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
Origins of DNA Methylation Alterations in Cancer:
Peter W. Laird will address this topic in a keynote lecture at the AACR Special Conference on DNA Methylation, Clonal Hematopoiesis, and Cancer (February 1-4, San Diego).
bit.ly/3UWPoEz
#AACRmethylation25 @peterwlaird
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
Congratulations to VAI's @DrRGJonesLab and @peterwlaird for being named to this year's @Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list — a distinction that marks them as leaders in their fields.
Read more: vai.org/hcr-2024
#HighlyCited2024 @ClarivateAG
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
Congrats to our newest Genetics PhD, Dr. Felicia Ebot-Ojong! Here Felicia is with her advisor Dr. Zack Lewis @UgaChromatinLab
Felicia will start a position at the Van Andel Institue @VAInstitute with Dr. Peter Laird @peterwlaird We are proud of you Dr. Ebot-Ojong!
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
🎉Thrilled to share that my 1st first-author paper is now published on @ACSPublications Analytical Chemistry! 📚 After 5 years of hard work, dedication, and perseverance, this project has finally come to fruition. Feeling both incredibly happy and deeply touched. Thank you to everyone who supported me on this journey! 🙏✨ @NilsWalterlab @TewariLab @peterwlaird & Alex Johnson-Buck #SingleMolecule #DNAmethylation #CancerResearch #Biomarker
🔬 Key findings:
#1: LOD below 1 fM
#2: 99.9999% specificity
#3: distinguish 2-5% DNA methylation in whole blood
pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.102…
Excited with to share our new deep single-cell whole genome bisulfite sequencing technique with @shenhui1986, along with some truly innovative DNA methylation analyses by lead author and talented MD/PhD student, Nathan Spix biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
Check out our discussion with @ReizelTzachi on the causality of replicative epimutations in aging, cancer, & epigenetic clocks. 👆
The interplay between DNA methylation and cellular replication is complex. The recent review by @zhouwanding and myself in @TrendsGenetics delves into this intricacy.
Feel free to take a look (now with a link that works): sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
Excited to be part of this single-cell chromatin accessibility study in cancer in @ScienceMagazine. Congratulations to my collaborators @WJGreenleaf, @HowardYChang, and all our co-authors for this great work. science.org/doi/10.1126/scie…
Peter W. Laird (@peterwlaird.bsky.social) retweeted
🎉🥳✨ Excited to share my first preprint on @biorxivpreprint !! "Ultrasensitive amplification-free quantification of a methyl CpG-rich cancer biomarker by single-molecule kinetic fingerprinting", a new digital single-molecule method enabling amplification-free detection of DNA methylation #SingleMolecule #DNAmethylation #CancerResearch #Biomarker. Thanks for my PI @NilsWalterLab and Alex Johnson-Buck as well as our fantastic collaborators @TewariLab & @peterwlaird
🔬 Key findings:
#1: LOD below 1 fM
#2: 99.9999% specificity
#3: distinguish 2-5% DNA methylation in whole blood
Your thoughts & feedback are welcome! ✨
🔍 Dive in: biorxiv.org/cgi/content/shor…
ALT The most well-studied epigenetic marker in humans is the 5-methyl modification of cytosine in DNA, which has great potential as a disease biomarker in liquid biopsies of cell-free DNA. Currently, quantification of DNA methylation relies heavily on bisulfite conversion followed by PCR amplification and NGS or microarray analysis. PCR is subject to potential bias in differential amplification of bisulfite-converted methylated versus unmethylated sequences. Here, we combine bisulfite conversion with single-molecule kinetic fingerprinting to develop an amplification-free assay for DNA methylation at the branched-chain amino acid transaminase 1 (BCAT1) promoter. Our assay selectively responds to methylated sequences with a limit of detection below 1 fM and a specificity of 99.9999%. Evaluating complex genomic DNA matrices, we reliably distinguish 2-5% DNA methylation at the BCAT1 promoter in whole blood DNA from completely unmethylated whole-genome amplified DNA. Taken together, these resul