Hey, I have contacted a lab in America that offers to do whole genome Bisulfite-seq service at the cost of $4200 is this test worth the money?
No. They would need to sample affected tissue. You would also need to determine the typical methylome profile in that same tissue from unaffected individuals.
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Makes sense to do a comparison test with a non PFS patient but Isn’t all the tissue affected here?
You would need lots of people as comparisons to make a benchmark that accounts for normal variation.
And the phenotypic variation among individuals suffering from any of these post-drug syndromes should be a testament to the wide range of affliction status in different tissues among different patients. We also can only guess at how much of an effect is intracellular influence. For example, screwed-up endocrinology from afflicted steroidogenic tissue could be influencing tissues not directly afflicted.
Check out the Milan study of SDR5A2 and you will see how much goes into a coherent methylation analysis.
$4500 is a lot of money to burn.
Hang on to it until a time when it can be put to much better use.
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I was speaking with one in 2015 that was going to charge $3,400. They needed a control as well.
Hey @Dubya_B does this mean you would need to pay the $4200 twice at least to compare. Also how is the biopsy an issue. Would you have pay someone else to do this also? Sorry just trying to learn.
Well, they usually call them a control group, not a control person. Whatever the purpose, a range of what is considered “normal” would need to be established to compare your test against. This wouldn’t really be possible with one control subject. You would also need more cases with this affliction to determine if some point of data outside of that established normal range is associated with this condition, or just a quirk caused by another factor.
No legitimate doctor would order a biopsy unless it was deemed medically necessary and I doubt a legitimate lab would accept some tissue sample you mailed in.
No worries, I’m having to re-learn basic statistics myself recently.
Thanks, makes sense. I guess I assumed there would be something that sticks out in an obviously in the area we were looking at. Also I assumed there would be a normal kind of methylation pattern the you could just compare without controls. Like woahhhh look at all this extreme methylation, here she is!!! I guess that sounds kinda stupid. I also thought the lab that was doing the tests would take care of the biopsy stuff also. Why does this have to be so complicated. So basically you have to know people and have connections to get anywhere with this. 
There is an ongoing human epigenome project attempting to make some sense of it all. It is a massive undertaking though.