Epigenome-wide scans identify differentially methylated regions for age and age-related phenotypes in a healthy ageing population.

Jordana T Bell; Pei-Chien Tsai; Tsun-Po Yang; Ruth Pidsley; James Nisbet; Daniel Glass; Massimo Mangino; Guangju Zhai; Feng Zhang; Ana Valdes; So-Youn Shin; Emma L Dempster; Robin M Murray; Elin Grundberg; Asa K Hedman; Alexandra Nica; Kerrin S Small; MuTHER Consortium; Emmanouil T Dermitzakis; Mark I McCarthy; Jonathan Mill; Tim D Spector; Panos Deloukas

Journal article

Epigenome-wide scans identify differentially methylated regions for age and age-related phenotypes in a healthy ageing population.

Jordana T Bell, Pei-Chien Tsai, Tsun-Po Yang, Ruth Pidsley, James Nisbet, Daniel Glass, Massimo Mangino, Guangju Zhai, Feng Zhang, Ana Valdes, So-Youn Shin, Emma L Dempster, Robin M Murray, Elin Grundberg, Asa K Hedman, Alexandra Nica, Kerrin S Small, undefined MuTHER Consortium, Emmanouil T Dermitzakis, Mark I McCarthy Show all

PLoS Genet | Published : 2012

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1002629

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Abstract

Age-related changes in DNA methylation have been implicated in cellular senescence and longevity, yet the causes and functional consequences of these variants remain unclear. To elucidate the role of age-related epigenetic changes in healthy ageing and potential longevity, we tested for association between whole-blood DNA methylation patterns in 172 female twins aged 32 to 80 with age and age-related phenotypes. Twin-based DNA methylation levels at 26,690 CpG-sites showed evidence for mean genome-wide heritability of 18%, which was supported by the identification of 1,537 CpG-sites with methylation QTLs in cis at FDR 5%. We performed genome-wide analyses to discover differentially methylated..

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