EWAS Open Platform: Integrated data, knowledge and toolkit for epigenome-wide association study

Abstract

Epigenome-Wide Association Study (EWAS) has become a standard strategy to discover DNA methylation variation of different phenotypes. Since 2018, we have developed EWAS Atlas and EWAS Data Hub to integrate a growing volume of EWAS knowledge and data, respectively. Here, we present EWAS Open Platform (https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/ewas) that includes EWAS Atlas, EWAS Data Hub and the newly developed EWAS Toolkit. In the current implementation, EWAS Open Platform integrates 617 018 high-quality EWAS associations from 910 publications, covering 51 phenotypes, 275 diseases and 104 environmental factors. It also provides well-normalized DNA methylation array data and the corresponding metadata from 115 852 samples, which involve 707 tissues, 218 cell lines and 528 diseases. Taking advantage of integrated knowledge and data in EWAS Atlas and EWAS Data Hub, EWAS Open Platform equips with EWAS Toolkit, a powerful one-stop site for EWAS enrichment, annotation, and knowledge network construction and visualization. Collectively, EWAS Open Platform provides open access to EWAS knowledge, data and toolkit and thus bears great utility for a broader range of relevant research.