Unknown,Transcriptomics,Genomics,Proteomics

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Buccals are likely to be a more informative surrogate tissue than blood for epigenome-wide association studies

ABSTRACT: There is increasing evidence that interindividual epigenetic variation is an etiological factor in common human diseases. Such epigenetic variation could be genetic or non-genetic in origin, and epigenome-wide association studies (EWASs) are underway for a wide variety of diseases/phenotypes. However, performing an EWAS is associated with a range of issues not typically encountered in genome-wide association studies (GWASs), such as the tissue to be analyzed. In many EWASs, it is not possible to analyze the target tissue in large numbers of live humans, and consequently surrogate tissues are employed, most commonly blood. But there is as yet no evidence demonstrating that blood is more informative than buccal cells, the other easily accessible tissue. To assess the potential of buccal cells for use in EWASs, we performed a comprehensive analysis of a buccal cell methylome using whole-genome bisulfite sequencing. Strikingly, a buccal vs. blood comparison reveals >6X as many hypomethylated regions in buccal. These tissue-specific differentially methylated regions (tDMRs) are strongly enriched for DNaseI hotspots. Almost 75% of these tDMRs are not captured by commonly used DNA methylome profiling platforms such as Reduced Representational Bisulfite Sequencing and the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip, and they also display distinct genomic properties. Buccal hypo-tDMRs show a statistically significant enrichment near SNPs associated to disease identified through GWASs. Finally, we find that, compared with blood, buccal hypo-tDMRs show significantly greater overlap with hypomethylated regions in other tissues. We propose that for non-blood based diseases/phenotypes, buccal will be a more informative tissue for EWASs. Bisulphite converted DNA from the 22 samples were hybridised to the Illumina Infinium 450k Human Methylation Beadchip

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

SUBMITTER: Robert Lowe

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-45529 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress

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Project description:Background DNA methylation has been recognized as a key mechanism in cell differentiation. Various studies have compared tissues to characterize epigenetically regulated genomic regions, but due to differences in study design and focus there still is no consensus as to the annotation of genomic regions predominantly involved in tissue-specific methylation. We used a new algorithm to identify and annotate tissue-specific Differentially Methylated Regions (tDMRs) in Illumina 450k chip data on four peripheral (blood, saliva, buccal swab and hair follicles) and six internal tissues (liver, muscle, pancreas, subcutaneous fat, omentum, spleen with matched blood samples). Results The majority of tDMRs, in both relative and absolute terms, occurred in CpG-poor regions. Further analysis revealed that these regions were associated with alternative transcription events (alternative first exons, mutually exclusive exons and cassette exons). Only a minority of tDMRs mapped to gene-body CpG islands (13%) or CpG islands shores (25%) suggesting a less prominent role for these regions than indicated previously. Implementation of ENCODE annotations showed enrichment of tDMRs in DNase hypersensitive sites and transcription factor binding sites. Despite the predominance of tissue differences, inter-individual differences in DNA methylation in internal tissues were correlated with that in blood for a subset of CpG sites in a locus and tissue-specific manner. Conclusions We conclude that tDMRs preferentially occur in CpG-poor regions and are associated with alternative transcription. Furthermore, our data suggest the utility of creating an atlas cataloguing variably methylated regions in internal tissues that are marked by DNA methylation measured in easy accessible peripheral tissues. Comparison of four peripheral (blood, saliva, buccal swab and hair follicles in n=5) and six internal tissues (liver, muscle, pancreas, subcutaneous fat, omentum, spleen with matched blood samples in n=6).

Project description:A tissue like buccal mucosa (from cheek swabs) would be an ideal sample material for rapid, easy collection for testing of biomarkers as an alternative to blood. A limited number of studies, primarily in the smoker/oral cancer literature, address this tissue's efficacy for quantitative PCR or microarray gene expression analysis. In this study both qPCR and microarray analyses were used to evaluate gene expression in buccal cells. An initial study comparing blood and buccal cells from the same individuals looked at relative amounts of four genes. The RNA isolated from buccal cells was degraded but was of sufficient quality to be used with RT-qPCR to detect expression of specific genes. Second, buccal cell RNA was used for microarray-based differential gene expression studies by comparing gene expression between smokers and nonsmokers. The isolation and amplification protocol allowed use of 150-fold less buccal cell RNA than had been reported previously with human microarrays. We report here the finding of a small number of significant gene expression differences between smokers and nonsmokers, using buccal cells as target material. Additionally, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis confirmed that these genes were changing expression in the same pattern as seen in an earlier buccal cell study performed by another group. Our results suggest that in spite of a high degree of RNA degradation, buccal cells from cheek mucosa could be used to detect differential gene expression between smokers and nonsmokers. However the RNA degradation, increase in sample variability and microarray failure rate show that buccal samples should be used with caution as source material in expression studies. Samples were collected from eight subjects, four smokers (Sm)and four nonsmokers (NS). Each cheek was sampled creating an a and b sample for each subject which is reflected in the array name. All samples were isolated separately for total RNA. Each was hybridzed to microarrays to examine for differential gene expression between smokers and nonsmokers. There are 14 total samples in the main dataset (Set 2). One cheek sample failed in microarray analysis for two individuals, 08BCNS23 a and 08BCSm27 a, and so are not included here. A sample set (Set 1) was created which contains the four samples shown in this file. They represent repeated sampling of both cheeks for two individuals to test for reproducibility. There is a separate RMA file and metadata file (this file) for these data. These included samples 08BC11Sm a and b, a smoker, and 08BC12NSa and b a nonsmoker.

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Buccals are likely to be a more informative surrogate tissue than blood for epigenome-wide association studies

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