Acta Neuropathol (2013) 126:741–756 DOI 10.1007/s00401-013-1168-8 OrIgINAl PAPer Deep sequencing reveals increased DNA methylation in chronic rat epilepsy

© The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com loss of DNA methylation in chronic rat epilepsy. Aber-rant methylation patterns were inversely correlated with gene expression changes using mrNA sequencing from same animals and tissue specimens. Administration of a ketogenic, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet attenuated seizure progression and ameliorated DNA methylation mediated changes in gene expression. This is the first report of unsupervised clustering of an epigenetic mark being used in epilepsy research to separate epileptic from non-epileptic animals as well as from animals receiving anti-convulsive dietary treatment. We further discuss the potential impact of epigenetic changes as a pathogenic mechanism of epileptogenesis. Keywords epilepsy · Hippocampus · epigenetic · DN