Seminar Series: David Rehkopf

An Introduction to Population Based Data for Studies of DNA Methylation

Presentation Slides

DNA methylation is a fundamental biological process that is under both environmental and genetic control in humans. Technological developments over the last 5 years have lowered the price of DNA methylation assays to the extent that relatively large population based samples are now adding data on close to 1 million DNA methylation sites to well characterized cohorts. Examining patterns of DNA methylation offers population scientists a historically unprecedented opportunity to understand the biological pathways through which myriad social, environmental and behavioral factors change human biology in ways that may be related to long-term disease risk. My talk will give a background on what is currently known about the factors that impact DNA methylation, and what is known about how it is related to human development, chronic diseases and aging. I will describe currently available and soon to be available population based data sources for the analysis of DNA methylation data. The break-out session following the talk will go into further practical details on the use of these data sources.