IKZF1 and cancer: Since regional gene silencing and DNA methylation or Long Range Epigenetic Silencing (LRES), defined as regions in the range from <1 Mbp to ~4 Mbp, has been observed in CRC [41] and other cancers [42,43] and one of our lead candidate genes, IKZF1 had been reported to be in an LRES region [33], we considered the location of genes we identified as methylated in CRC.