How to Use methylation in a Sentence

methylation

noun
  • During methylation, a methyl group in the epigenome turns genes off.
    — Tad Friend, New Yorker, 4 Aug. 2025
  • The other was a methylation test called GrimAge.
    — Tad Friend, New Yorker, 4 Aug. 2025
  • Effects were variable across neurons; only about 10% to 30% of cells showed major methylation changes.
    — New Atlas, 11 Sep. 2025
  • And while correlation between methylation and gene expression was strong, causality was not proven.
    — New Atlas, 16 Aug. 2025
  • Further, the study did not directly prove which methylation changes caused what transcriptomic changes; that would require further research.
    — New Atlas, 11 Sep. 2025
  • Epigenetic changes, such as methylation of genes involved in the immune response, were also documented.
    — Scott E. Solomon, STAT, 22 Apr. 2026
  • But perhaps the strongest evidence of her secret to longevity came through her epigenetic clock markers, which tell the story of biological age through DNA methylation patterns.
    — New Atlas, 24 Sep. 2025
  • Our findings also suggest that DNA methylation could help researchers understand something completely new about the brain’s response to injury that existing clinical tools cannot detect.
    — Amery Treble-Barna, The Conversation, 9 Dec. 2025
  • Tally launched in 2023, and draws on a DNA methylation dataset of some 8,000 initial participants to evaluate consumers’ epigenetic ages based on a cheek swab.
    — James Manso, Footwear News, 3 Sep. 2019
  • The team collected skin samples from the dolphins to measure DNA methylation patterns—biochemical modifications that determine which genes are activated—in order to estimate their biological ages.
    — Hasmik Kirakosyan, Scientific American, 23 Jan. 2026
  • The new atlas, published March 11 in the scientific journal Cell, details the ways in which genome structure, gene activity and methylation (a biochemical mechanism for regulating gene expression) change across eight brain regions and 36 brain cell types.
    — Noah Lyons, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Apr. 2026
  • Then, in 2011, a geneticist and biostatistician named Steve Horvath found a way to estimate a person’s age using methylation patterns in the epigenome—the set of proteins and compounds that attach to your DNA and determine which of your genes get expressed.
    — Tad Friend, New Yorker, 4 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'methylation.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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