Research Summary

Inherited and acquired changes to DNA are fundamental to cancer, aging, and other diseases. Environmentally acquired changes include both genetic mutations which alter the DNA sequence, and epigenetic changes where the primary DNA sequence remains unchanged, but DNA methylation and chromatin modifications may affect gene transcription. Jack A. Taylor, M.D., Ph.D., formerly lead the Molecular & Genetic Epidemiology Group in the Epidemiology Branch along with his laboratory in the Epigenetics and RNA Biology Laboratory. The group, worked to understand the interaction between DNA and environmental exposures in human cancer. As Scientist Emeritus, Taylor’s continuing research focuses on two main elements:

• investigating the role of environmental exposure and aging in epigenetic modifications to DNA
• studying the role of genes, epigenetic modifications and environmental exposure in cancer risk

Taylor’s research on epigenetic modification addresses the hypothesis that different environmental exposures cause different patterns of DNA methylation in genes that are important in carcinogenesis. Much of this work has been on breast cancer investigating whether exposure and life course events lead to changes in the patten of DNA methylation across the genome and whether patterns of DNA methylation can be used to predict breast cancer risk. This work includes the first epigenome-wide association study of breast cancer which identified and replicated over 3000 CpG sites associated with breast cancer risk and described changes that varied by differing intervals between blood draw and incident cancer suggesting that blood methylation could serve as a novel marker of early cancer development. In subsequent work he used methylation data to estimate both biological age acceleration and cell type proportions and has shown, in a series of publications, that both metrics are associated with risk of future breast cancer. In a series of other publications, he identifies methylation patterns associated with lifestyle and environmental exposures: age, smoking, alcohol, diet, physical activity, body composition, diethylstilbesterol, hormone therapy, reproductive events, shift work, air pollution, and many more. Taylor and his group have a long history of publishing innovative statistical and bioinformatic methods including a a series of important methods for analysis of methylation array data which are freely available in their frequently downloaded ENmix software package on Bioconductor.

Taylor received a B.A. from Carleton College, an M.D. from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Taylor is licensed in North Carolina, and holds board certifications in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine.  He is an adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at UNC and held a prior adjunct appointment in the Department of Medicine at Duke University.

Studies

• LIFE and VALID Lung Studies
  The LIFE study's objective is to evaluate the effectiveness of Lung Imaging Fluorescence Endoscopy (LIFE) in detecting and following early lung lesions in patients at high risk for developing lung cancer. The VALID study, a companion to the LIFE study, evaluates the effect of initial arterial ligation versus venous ligation during surgery on the risk of distant metastases in lung cancer patients
• Prostate Cancer Consortium
• Sister Study

Software

• ENmix
  A software suite in R for preprocessing of methylation array data with extensive tools quality control, visualization, and analysis.
• mPopTag
  A tool used to select or evaluate linkage disequilibrium tag SNPs for multiple populations.
• SNPinfo: SNP Selection and Functional Information
• TAGster
  A tool to select, evaluate and visualize LD tag SNPs for single or multiple populations.