IDENTIFYING INTERGENERATIONAL PATTERNS OF CORRELATED METHYLATION SITES

Abstract

DNA methylation can be transmitted through generations. This paper proposes a clustering method to identify the intergenerational patterns from parents to their offspring. Motivated by the potential of correlation between DNA methylation sites, we use the multivariate generalized beta distribution to model the blockwise correlation structure among the sites. A stochastic EM algorithm is implemented to estimate the parameters, and BIC is applied to determine the optimal number of clusters. Simulations demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method. We further applied the approach to cluster DNA methylation data generated from a cohort study on asthma and allergic conditions.