Unknown,Transcriptomics,Genomics,Proteomics

Dataset Information

Differential DNA Methylation in Purified Human Blood Cells

ABSTRACT: Methylation of cytosines at CpG sites is a common epigenetic DNA modification that can be measured by a large number of methods, now even in a genome-wide manner for hundreds of thousands of sites. The application of DNA methylation analysis is becoming widely popular in complex disorders, for example, to understand part of the “missing inheritance”. The DNA samples most readily available for methylation studies are derived from whole blood. However, blood consists of many functionally and developmentally distinct cell populations in varying proportions. We studied whether such variation might affect the interpretation of methylation studies based on whole blood DNA. We found in healthy male blood donors there is important variation in the methylation profiles of whole blood, mononuclear cells, granulocytes, and cells from seven selected purified lineages. CpG methylation between mononuclear cells and granulocytes differed for 22% of the 8252 probes covering the selected 343 genes implicated in immune-related disorders by genome-wide association studies, and at least one probe was differentially methylated for 85% of the genes, indicating that whole blood methylation results might be unintelligible. For individual genes, even if the overall methylation patterns might appear similar, a few CpG sites in the regulatory regions may have opposite methylation patterns (i.e., hypo/hyper) in the main blood cell types. We conclude that interpretation of whole blood methylation profiles should be performed with great caution and for any differences implicated in a disorder, the differences resulting from varying proportions of white blood cell types should be considered. Six healthy male blood donors, age 38 ± 13.6 years, were included in the study. From each individual, global DNA methylation levels were analyzed in whole blood, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and granulocytes as well as for seven isolated cell populations (CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, CD56+ NK cells, CD19+ B cells, CD14+ monocytes, neutrophils, and eosinophils), n=60 samples analyzed in total.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

SUBMITTER: Lovisa Reinius

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-35069 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress

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Publications

Differential DNA methylation in purified human blood cells: implications for cell lineage and studies on disease susceptibility.

Reinius Lovisa E LE Acevedo Nathalie N Joerink Maaike M Pershagen Göran G Dahlén Sven-Erik SE Greco Dario D Söderhäll Cilla C Scheynius Annika A Kere Juha J

PloS one 20120725 7

Methylation of cytosines at CpG sites is a common epigenetic DNA modification that can be measured by a large number of methods, now even in a genome-wide manner for hundreds of thousands of sites. The application of DNA methylation analysis is becoming widely popular in complex disorders, for example, to understand part of the "missing heritability". The DNA samples most readily available for methylation studies are derived from whole blood. However, blood consists of many functionally and deve ...[more]

PMID: 22848472

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Project description:DNA methylation has become increasingly recognized in the etiology of psychiatric disorders. Because brain tissue is not accessible in living humans, epigenetic studies are most often conducted in blood. Saliva is often collected for genotyping studies but is rarely used to examine DNA methylation because the proportion of epithelial cells and leukocytes varies extensively between individuals. The goal of this study was to evaluate whether saliva DNA is informative for studies of psychiatric disorders. Saliva and blood methylation was clearly distinguishable though there was positive correlation overall. There was little correlation in CpG sites within relevant candidate genes. Correlated CpG sites were more likely to occur in areas of low CpG density (i.e. CpG shores and open seas). There was more variability in CpG sites from saliva than blood, which may reflect its heterogeneity. Thus, this study provides a framework for using DNA methylation from saliva and suggests that DNA methylation of saliva may offer distinct opportunities for epidemiological and longitudinal studies of psychiatric traits. DNA methylation was assessed in saliva and blood samples from 64 adult African Americans. Both saliva and blood samples were collected from each participant. Saliva was stored in Oragene DNA sample collection kits (DNA Genotek), and blood was collected in EDTA vacuum tubes. DNA was extracted using the Puregene Genomic DNA kit (Invitrogen). DNA methylation was interrogated for each sample using the HumanMethylation450 BeadChip (Illumina). Analyses for tissue-specific DNA patterns were conducted using linear regression adjusted for appropriate covariates, including estimated cellular proportions. The estimated proportion of epithelial cells in saliva DNA ranged from 3-99% (median 26%). In blood, the estimated proportion of lymphocytes ranged from 25-70% (median 48%) and neutrophils ranged from 42-84% (median 58%). Methylation of 68.8% of all CpG sites differed relative to epithelial cell proportion (FDR<.05). Our results provide a framework for methylation studies in DNA extracted from saliva and highlight the importance of controlling for the proportion of epithelial and leukocyte cells. This presents an attractive opportunity for investigators that have already collected salivary DNA for genetic studies of psychiatric traits.

Project description:DNA methylation plays a vital role in genome dynamics and, in the human genome, occurs predominantly at cytosine guanine dinucleotide (CpG) sites. The diploid haploid human genome analysed here contains around 2060 million CpG sites (methylome) where DNA methylation can vary, affecting many biological processes in health and disease. Using whole-genome bisulfite sequencing, we report the essentially complete (92.6282%) methylome of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) which constitute an important source for clinical blood tests world-wide. We find the majority of CpG sites (68.4% at false positive rate of 0.46%) and only <0.2% of non-CpG sites to be methylated, demonstrating that non-CpG cytosine methylation is negligible in human PBMC. Analysis of the PBMC methylome revealed a rich landscape of epigenomic data for 20 distinct features including regulatory, protein-coding, RNA gene coding, non-coding and repeat sequences. Alu element mobility, for instance, was found to negatively correlate with their methylation levels, emphasizing the critical role of DNA methylation in genome stability. Integration of our methylome data with the previously determined genome sequence of the same Asian individual analysed here, enabled a first assessment of allele-specific methylation (ASM) differences between the two haploid methylomes of any individual. Using a conservative cut-off (p <0.001), we identified 599 haploid differentially methylated regions (hDMRs) covering 287 genes. Of these, 76 genes had hDMRs within 2kb of their transcriptional start sites of which >80% displayed allele-specific expression (ASE) after random testing using TA clone sequencing of the same PBMC sample. These data show, that ASM is a recurrent phenomenon and highly correlated with ASE, suggesting that imprinting may be more common than previously thought. Our study not only provides a comprehensive resource for future epigenomic research but also demonstrates a paradigm of large-scale epigenomics studies through new sequencing technology. We report the essentially complete (92.6282%) methylome of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) which constitute an important source for clinical blood tests world-wide.

Dataset Information

Differential DNA Methylation in Purified Human Blood Cells

Publications

Differential DNA methylation in purified human blood cells: implications for cell lineage and studies on disease susceptibility.

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