Ruth Pidsley

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that quantile normalization methods produce marked improvement, even in highly consistent data, by all three metrics, and that careful selection of preprocessing steps can minimize variance and thus improve statistical power, especially for the detection of the small absolute DNA methylation changes likely associated with complex disease phenotypes.

TL;DR: The EPIC array is a significant improvement over the HM450 array, with increased genome coverage of regulatory regions and high reproducibility and reliability, providing a valuable tool for high-throughput human methylome analyses from diverse clinical samples.

TL;DR: The results suggest that in a small set of genes DNA methylation may be a candidate mechanism of mediating not only environmental, but also genetic effects on age-related phenotypes, and that a-DMRs may initiate at an earlier age.

TL;DR: This study reinforces the importance of DNA methylation in regulating cellular phenotype across tissues, and highlights genomic patterns of epigenetic variation across functionally distinct regions of the brain, providing a resource for the epigenetics and neuroscience research communities.

TL;DR: The agglomeration of genomically localised individual methylation sites into discrete DMRs is currently best served by a combination of DM-signal smoothing and subsequent threshold specification, and the design of the 450K array shows preference for CpG sites that are more likely to be differentially methylated, but its overall coverage does not adequately reflect the depth and complexity of methylation signatures afforded by sequencing.