Excerpts from a paper posted on the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health web site 
titled:
TLC-based detection of methylated cytosine: application to aging epigenetics
5-Methylcytosine (m(5)C) has a plethora of functions and roles in various biological processes including human diseases and aging. A TLC-based fast and simple method for quantitative determination of total genomic levels of m(5)C in DNA is described, which can be applicable to aging research with respect to rapid and high throughput screening and comparison. Using this method, an example of the analysis of global alternations of m(5)C in serially passaged human skin fibroblasts is provided, which shows age-related global hypomethylation during cellular aging in vitro.
Click Here to access the paper.