The profiling of DNA methylation modifications in peripheral blood has significant potential to determine risk factors for human disease. Little is known concerning the sensitivity of DNA methylation profiles to ex vivo sample handling. Here, we studied typical conditions prior to sample storage associated with cord blood samples obtained from clinical investigations using reduced representation bisulfite sequencing. We examined both whole blood collected shortly after birth and dried blood spots, a potentially important source of neonatal blood for investigation of the DNA methylome and the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease in human cohorts because they are routinely collected during clinical care. Samples were matched across different time conditions, as they were from the same cord blood samples obtained from the same individuals. Maintaining whole blood ex vivo up to 24 h (4°C) or dried blood spots up to 7 days (room temp.) had little effect on DNA methylation profiles. Minimal differences were detected between cord blood immediately frozen and dried blood spots. Our results indicate that DNA methylation profiles are resilient to ex vivo sample handling conditions prior to storage. These data will help guide future human studies focused toward determination of DNA methylation modifications in whole blood.
Pubmed ID: 32265984 RIS Download
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Original SAMTOOLS package has been split into three separate repositories including Samtools, BCFtools and HTSlib. Samtools for manipulating next generation sequencing data used for reading, writing, editing, indexing,viewing nucleotide alignments in SAM,BAM,CRAM format. BCFtools used for reading, writing BCF2,VCF, gVCF files and calling, filtering, summarising SNP and short indel sequence variants. HTSlib used for reading, writing high throughput sequencing data.
View all literature mentionsAn R package for DNA methylation analysis and annotation from high-throughput bisulfite sequencing.
View all literature mentionsIntegrated database resource consisting of 16 main databases, broadly categorized into systems information, genomic information, and chemical information. In particular, gene catalogs in completely sequenced genomes are linked to higher-level systemic functions of cell, organism, and ecosystem. Analysis tools are also available. KEGG may be used as reference knowledge base for biological interpretation of large-scale datasets generated by sequencing and other high-throughput experimental technologies.
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