Integrated analysis of human DNA methylation, gene expression, and genomic variation in iMETHYL database using kernel tensor decomposition-based unsupervised feature extraction

PLoS One. 2023 Aug 9;18(8):e0289029. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289029. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Integrating gene expression, DNA methylation, and genomic variants simultaneously without location coincidence (i.e., irrespective of distance from each other) or pairwise coincidence (i.e., direct identification of triplets of gene expression, DNA methylation, and genomic variants, and not integration of pairwise coincidences) is difficult. In this study, we integrated gene expression, DNA methylation, and genome variants from the iMETHYL database using the recently proposed kernel tensor decomposition-based unsupervised feature extraction method with limited computational resources (i.e., short CPU time and small memory requirements). Our methods do not require prior knowledge of the subjects because they are fully unsupervised in that unsupervised tensor decomposition is used. The selected genes and genomic variants were significantly targeted by transcription factors that were biologically enriched in KEGG pathway terms as well as in the intra-related regulatory network. The proposed method is promising for integrated analyses of gene expression, methylation, and genomic variants with limited computational resources.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • DNA Methylation*
  • Databases, Factual
  • Gene Expression
  • Genomics
  • Humans
  • Transcription Factors*

Substances

  • Transcription Factors

Grants and funding

This study was partially funded by the Tohoku Medical Megabank project, supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Sciences, and Technology of the Japanese government and the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development. This study was also supported by KAKENHI, [grant numbers 19H05270, 20H04848, and 20K12067] to YHT. The super computer resource (powered by AMED research grant JP20km0405001) was provided by Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization, Tohoku University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.