Genome-wide DNA methylation comparison between live human brain and peripheral tissues within individuals

Differential DNA methylation in the brain is associated with many psychiatric diseases, but access to brain tissues is essentially limited to postmortem samples. The use of surrogate tissues has become common in identifying methylation changes associated with psychiatric disease. In this study, we determined the extent to which peripheral tissues can be used as surrogates for DNA methylation in the brain. Blood, saliva, buccal, and live brain tissue samples from 27 patients with medically intractable epilepsy undergoing brain resection were collected (age range 5-61 years). Genome-wide methylation was assessed with the Infinium HumanMethylation450 (n = 12) and HumanMethylationEPIC BeadChip arrays (n = 21). For…

• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: T32GM008629, K23MH107654, 1 S10 OD016199-01A1
• HC
  Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Iowa
• RJ
  Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa
• NC
  National Center for Research Resources

  Award: S10 OD016199-01A1