Many obesity-associated SNPs strongly associate with DNA methylation changes at proximal promoters and enhancers

ABSTRACT: Background: The mechanisms of how genetic variants (SNPs) identified in genome-wide association studies act to influence body mass remain unknown for most of these SNPs, which continue to puzzle the scientific community. Recent evidence points to epigenetic and chromatin state of the genome to have an important role. Methods: 355 healthy young individuals were genotyped for 52 known obesity-associated SNPs and we obtained DNA methylation levels in their blood using the Illumina 450K BeadChip. Associations between alleles and methylation at proximal cytosine residues were tested using a linear model adjusted for age, sex, weight category and a proxy for blood cell type counts. For replication in other tissues, we used two open-access datasets (skin fibroblasts, n=62; four brain regions, n=

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

SUBMITTER: Sarah Voisin 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-73103 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress