Cell-type-specific resolution epigenetics without the need for cell sorting or single-cell biology.

ABSTRACT: High costs and technical limitations of cell sorting and single-cell techniques currently restrict the collection of large-scale, cell-type-specific DNA methylation data. This, in turn, impedes our ability to tackle key biological questions that pertain to variation within a population, such as identification of disease-associated genes at a cell-type-specific resolution. Here, we show mathematically and empirically that cell-type-specific methylation levels of an individual can be learned from its tissue-level bulk data, conceptually emulating the case where the individual has been profiled with a single-cell resolution and then signals were aggregated in each cell population separately. Provided with this unprecedented way to perform powerful large-scale epigenetic studies with cell-type

SUBMITTER: Rahmani E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6668473 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature