Population-specificity of human DNA methylation.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Fraser HB
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3334571 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Feb
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Population-specificity of human DNA methylation.
Fraser Hunter B HB Lam Lucia L LL Neumann Sarah M SM Kobor Michael S MS
Genome biology 20120209 2
<h4>Background</h4>Ethnic differences in human DNA methylation have been shown for a number of CpG sites, but the genome-wide patterns and extent of these differences are largely unknown. In addition, whether the genetic control of polymorphic DNA methylation is population-specific has not been investigated.<h4>Results</h4>Here we measure DNA methylation near the transcription start sites of over 14, 000 genes in 180 cell lines derived from one African and one European population. We find popula ...[more]
Similar Datasets
Project description:Ethnic differences in human DNA methylation have been shown for a number of CpG sites, but the genome-wide patterns and extent of these differences are unknown. In addition, whether the genetic control of polymorphic DNA methylation is population-specific has not been investigated. Here we measure DNA methylation near the transcription start sites of over 14,000 genes in 180 cell lines derived from one African and one European population. We find population-specific patterns of DNA methylation at over a third of all genes. Furthermore, although the methylation at over a thousand CpG sites is heritable, these heritabilities are also distinctly different between populations, suggesting extensive divergence in the genetic control of DNA methylation. In support of this, genetic mapping of DNA methylation reveals that there is also little overlap in genetic associations between populations. This population-specificity is supported by the patterns of DNA methylation in several hundred brain samples, suggesting it holds in vivo and across tissues. These results suggest that DNA methylation is highly divergent between populations, and that this divergence may be due in large part to complex epistasis or gene x environment interactions.
2012-01-30 | GSE27146 | GEO
Project description:Ethnic differences in human DNA methylation have been shown for a number of CpG sites, but the genome-wide patterns and extent of these differences are unknown. In addition, whether the genetic control of polymorphic DNA methylation is population-specific has not been investigated. Here we measure DNA methylation near the transcription start sites of over 14,000 genes in 180 cell lines derived from one African and one European population. We find population-specific patterns of DNA methylation at over a third of all genes. Furthermore, although the methylation at over a thousand CpG sites is heritable, these heritabilities are also distinctly different between populations, suggesting extensive divergence in the genetic control of DNA methylation. In support of this, genetic mapping of DNA methylation reveals that there is also little overlap in genetic associations between populations. This population-specificity is supported by the patterns of DNA methylation in several hundred brain samples, suggesting it holds in vivo and across tissues. These results suggest that DNA methylation is highly divergent between populations, and that this divergence may be due in large part to complex epistasis or gene x environment interactions. Genomic DNA from 180 lymphoblastoid cell lines were bisulphite converted and hybridized, along with 8 additional technical replicates, to the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation27 Beadchip v1.2 for genome-wide DNA methylation profiling. The cell lines were derived from two HapMap populations: 'CEPH (Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe)' (CEU) and 'Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria' (YRI).
2012-01-30 | E-GEOD-27146 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:DNA methylation occurs predominantly on cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) dinucleotides in the mammalian genome, and the methylation landscape is maintained over mitotic cell division. It has been posited that coupling of maintenance methylation activity among neighbouring CpGs is critical to stability over cellular generations; however, the mechanism is unclear. We used mathematical models and stochastic simulation to analyse data from experiments that probe genome-wide methylation of nascent DNA post-replication in cells. We find that DNA methylation maintenance rates on individual CpGs are locally correlated, and the degree of this correlation varies by genomic regional context. By using theory of protein diffusion along DNA, we show that exponential decay of methylation rate correlation with genomic distance is consistent with enzyme processivity. Our results provide quantitative evidence of genome-wide methyltransferase processivity in vivo. We further developed a method to disentangle different mechanistic sources of kinetic correlations. From the experimental data, we estimate that an individual methyltransferase methylates neighbour CpGs processively if they are 36 basepairs apart, on average. But other mechanisms of coupling dominate for longer inter-CpG distances. Our study demonstrates that quantitative insights into enzymatic mechanisms can be obtained from replication-associated, cell-based genome-wide measurements, by combining data-driven statistical analyses with hypothesis-driven mathematical modelling.
| S-EPMC9597173 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveDNA methylation may be a stable epigenetic contributor to defining fat cell lineage.MethodsWe performed reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) and RNA-seq to depict a genome-wide integrative view of the DNA methylome and transcriptome during brown and white adipogenesis.ResultsOur analysis demonstrated that DNA methylation is a stable epigenetic signature for brown and white cell lineage before, during, and after differentiation. We identified 31 genes whose promoters were significantly differentially methylated between white and brown adipogenesis at all three time points of differentiation. Among them, five genes belong to the Hox family; their expression levels were anti-correlated with promoter methylation, suggesting a regulatory role of DNA methylation in transcription. Blocking DNA methylation with 5-Aza-cytidine increased the expression of these genes, with the most prominent effect on Hoxc10, a repressor of BAT marker expression.ConclusionsOur data suggest that DNA methylation may play an important role in lineage-specific development in adipocytes.
| S-EPMC5034609 | biostudies-literature
Project description:DNA methylation is an important epigenetic mechanism that has been linked to complex diseases and is of great interest to researchers as a potential link between genome, environment, and disease. As the scale of DNA methylation association studies approaches that of genome-wide association studies, issues such as population stratification will need to be addressed. It is well-documented that failure to adjust for population stratification can lead to false positives in genetic association studies, but population stratification is often unaccounted for in DNA methylation studies. Here, we propose several approaches to correct for population stratification using principal components (PCs) from different subsets of genome-wide methylation data. We first illustrate the potential for confounding due to population stratification by demonstrating widespread associations between DNA methylation and race in 388 individuals (365 African American and 23 Caucasian). We subsequently evaluate the performance of our PC-based approaches and other methods in adjusting for confounding due to population stratification. Our simulations show that (1) all of the methods considered are effective at removing inflation due to population stratification, and (2) maximum power can be obtained with single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based PCs, followed by methylation-based PCs, which outperform both surrogate variable analysis and genomic control. Among our different approaches to computing methylation-based PCs, we find that PCs based on CpG sites chosen for their potential to proxy nearby SNPs can provide a powerful and computationally efficient approach to adjust for population stratification in DNA methylation studies when genome-wide SNP data are unavailable.
| S-EPMC4090102 | biostudies-literature
Project description:(1) In clinical practice and biomedical research populations are often divided categorically into distinct racial and ethnic groups. In reality, these categories comprise diverse groups with highly heterogeneous histories, cultures, traditions, religions, as well as social and environmental exposures. While the factors captured by these categories contribute to clinical practice and biomedical research, the use of race/ethnicity is widely debated. As a response to this debate, genetic ancestry has been suggested as a complement or alternative to this categorization. However, few studies have examined the effect of genetic ancestry, racial/ethnic identity, and environmental exposures on biological processes. Herein, we examine the contribution of self-identification within ethnicity, genetic ancestry, and environmental exposures on epigenetic modification of DNA methylation, a phenomenon affected by both genetic and environmental factors. We typed over 450,000 variably methylated CpG sites in primary whole blood of 573 individuals of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent who also had high-density genotype data. We found that methylation levels at a large number of CpG sites were significantly associated with ethnicity even when adjusting for genetic ancestry. In addition, we found an enrichment of ethnicity-associated sites amongst loci previously associated with environmental and social exposures. Interestingly, one of the strongest associated sites is driven by the Duffy Null blood type variant, demonstrating a new function of the locus in lymphocytes. Overall, the methylation changes associated with race/ethnicity, driven by both genes and environment, highlight the importance of measuring and accounting for both self-identified race/ethnicity and genetic ancestry in clinical and biomedical studies and the benefits of studying diverse populations. (2) In epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS), different methylation profiles of distinct cell-types may lead to false discoveries. We introduce ReFACTor, a method based on principal component analysis (PCA) for the correction of cell-type heterogeneity in EWAS. ReFACTor does not require knowledge of the cell counts, and it obtains improved estimates of the cell-type composition, resulting in improved power and control for false positives in EWAS. Bisulphite converted DNA from 573 samples were hybridised to the Illumina Infinium 450k Human Methylation Beadchip and a complete blood count with automated white blood cell differential was performed by automated flow cytometry for 95 of the samples.
2016-02-29 | E-GEOD-77716 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:Background and aimsMutations in TERT (telomerase reverse transcriptase) promoter are established gatekeepers in early hepatocarcinogenesis, but little is known about other molecular alterations driving this process. Epigenetic deregulation is a critical event in early malignancies. Thus, we aimed to (1) analyze DNA methylation changes during the transition from preneoplastic lesions to early HCC (eHCC) and identify candidate epigenetic gatekeepers, and to (2) assess the prognostic potential of methylation changes in cirrhotic tissue.Approach and resultsMethylome profiling was performed using Illumina HumanMethylation450 (485,000 cytosine-phosphateguanine, 96% of known cytosine-phosphateguanine islands), with data available for a total of 390 samples: 16 healthy liver, 139 cirrhotic tissue, 8 dysplastic nodules, and 227 HCC samples, including 40 eHCC below 2cm. A phylo-epigenetic tree derived from the Euclidean distances between differentially DNA-methylated sites (n = 421,997) revealed a gradient of methylation changes spanning healthy liver, cirrhotic tissue, dysplastic nodules, and HCC with closest proximity of dysplasia to HCC. Focusing on promoter regions, we identified epigenetic gatekeeper candidates with an increasing proportion of hypermethylated samples (beta value > 0.5) from cirrhotic tissue (<1%), to dysplastic nodules (≥25%), to eHCC (≥50%), and confirmed inverse correlation between DNA methylation and gene expression for TSPYL5 (testis-specific Y-encoded-like protein 5), KCNA3 (potassium voltage-gated channel, shaker-related subfamily, member 3), LDHB (lactate dehydrogenase B), and SPINT2 (serine peptidase inhibitor, Kunitz type 2) (all P < 0.001). Unsupervised clustering of genome-wide methylation profiles of cirrhotic tissue identified two clusters, M1 and M2, with 42% and 58% of patients, respectively, which correlates with survival (P < 0.05), independent of etiology.ConclusionsGenome-wide DNA-methylation profiles accurately discriminate the different histological stages of human hepatocarcinogenesis. We report on epigenetic gatekeepers in the transition between dysplastic nodules and eHCC. DNA-methylation changes in cirrhotic tissue correlate with clinical outcomes.
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Project description:The process of aging results in a host of changes at the cellular and molecular levels, which include senescence, telomere shortening, and changes in gene expression. Epigenetic patterns also change over the lifespan, suggesting that epigenetic changes may constitute an important component of the aging process. The epigenetic mark that has been most highly studied is DNA methylation, the presence of methyl groups at CpG dinucleotides. These dinucleotides are often located near gene promoters and associate with gene expression levels. Early studies indicated that global levels of DNA methylation increase over the first few years of life and then decrease beginning in late adulthood. Recently, with the advent of microarray and next-generation sequencing technologies, increases in variability of DNA methylation with age have been observed, and a number of site-specific patterns have been identified. It has also been shown that certain CpG sites are highly associated with age, to the extent that prediction models using a small number of these sites can accurately predict the chronological age of the donor. Together, these observations point to the existence of two phenomena that both contribute to age-related DNA methylation changes: epigenetic drift and the epigenetic clock. In this review, we focus on healthy human aging throughout the lifetime and discuss the dynamics of DNA methylation as well as how interactions between the genome, environment, and the epigenome influence aging rates. We also discuss the impact of determining 'epigenetic age' for human health and outline some important caveats to existing and future studies.
| S-EPMC4693469 | biostudies-other
Project description:(1) In clinical practice and biomedical research populations are often divided categorically into distinct racial and ethnic groups. In reality, these categories comprise diverse groups with highly heterogeneous histories, cultures, traditions, religions, as well as social and environmental exposures. While the factors captured by these categories contribute to clinical practice and biomedical research, the use of race/ethnicity is widely debated. As a response to this debate, genetic ancestry has been suggested as a complement or alternative to this categorization. However, few studies have examined the effect of genetic ancestry, racial/ethnic identity, and environmental exposures on biological processes. Herein, we examine the contribution of self-identification within ethnicity, genetic ancestry, and environmental exposures on epigenetic modification of DNA methylation, a phenomenon affected by both genetic and environmental factors. We typed over 450,000 variably methylated CpG sites in primary whole blood of 573 individuals of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent who also had high-density genotype data. We found that methylation levels at a large number of CpG sites were significantly associated with ethnicity even when adjusting for genetic ancestry. In addition, we found an enrichment of ethnicity-associated sites amongst loci previously associated with environmental and social exposures. Interestingly, one of the strongest associated sites is driven by the Duffy Null blood type variant, demonstrating a new function of the locus in lymphocytes. Overall, the methylation changes associated with race/ethnicity, driven by both genes and environment, highlight the importance of measuring and accounting for both self-identified race/ethnicity and genetic ancestry in clinical and biomedical studies and the benefits of studying diverse populations. (2) In epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS), different methylation profiles of distinct cell-types may lead to false discoveries. We introduce ReFACTor, a method based on principal component analysis (PCA) for the correction of cell-type heterogeneity in EWAS. ReFACTor does not require knowledge of the cell counts, and it obtains improved estimates of the cell-type composition, resulting in improved power and control for false positives in EWAS.
2016-02-29 | GSE77716 | GEO
Project description:Targeted DNA methylation is a technique that aims to methylate cytosines in selected genomic loci. In the most widely used approach a CG-specific DNA methyltransferase (MTase) is fused to a sequence specific DNA binding protein, which binds in the vicinity of the targeted CG site(s). Although the technique has high potential for studying the role of DNA methylation in higher eukaryotes, its usefulness is hampered by insufficient methylation specificity. One of the approaches proposed to suppress methylation at unwanted sites is to use MTase variants with reduced DNA binding affinity. In this work we investigated how methylation specificity of chimeric MTases containing variants of the CG-specific prokaryotic MTase M.SssI fused to zinc finger or dCas9 targeting domains is influenced by mutations affecting catalytic activity and/or DNA binding affinity of the MTase domain. Specificity of targeted DNA methylation was assayed in E. coli harboring a plasmid with the target site. Digestions of the isolated plasmids with methylation sensitive restriction enzymes revealed that specificity of targeted DNA methylation was dependent on the activity but not on the DNA binding affinity of the MTase. These results have implications for the design of strategies of targeted DNA methylation.
| S-EPMC8316445 | biostudies-literature