DNA methylation is one of the important epigenetic modifications in controlling gene expression and yet it is also known as one of the hallmarks of cancer. In principle, interrogation of DNA methylation in human cancer involves a large amount of data generated by experiments. Hence it is important to extract biological results from these huge amount of data. In this mini- course, we will first introduce some useful statistics approaches, and then apply these methods to methylation studies. The following topics will be covered.

 

(1) Kaplan-Meier estimator

(2) Log-rank test

(3) Cox proportional hazard model

(4) Analysis of DNA methylation data