Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 16, 2026
A Semiautomated ChIP-Seq Procedure for Large-scale Epigenetic Studies
Published on: August 13, 2020
Enlarged leukocyte referent libraries can explain additional variance in blood-based epigenome-wide association
Stephanie Kim1,2, Melissa Eliot1, Devin C Koestler3
1Department of Epidemiology, Brown University School of Public Health, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
Aim:
We examined whether variation in blood-based epigenome-wide association studies could be more completely explained by augmenting existing reference DNA methylation libraries.
Materials & Methods:
We compared existing and enhanced libraries in predicting variability in three publicly available 450K methylation datasets that collected whole-blood samples. Models were fit separately to each CpG site and used to estimate the additional variability when adjustments for cell composition were made with each library.
Results:
Calculation of the mean difference in the CpG-specific residual sums of squares error between models for an arthritis, aging and metabolic syndrome dataset, indicated that an enhanced library explained significantly more variation across all three datasets (p < 10(-3)).
Conclusion:
Pathologically important immune cell subtypes can explain important variability in epigenome-wide association studies done in blood.
