MLML2R: an R package for maximum likelihood estimation of DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation proportions.

Abstract Accurately measuring epigenetic marks such as 5-methylcytosine (5-mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) at the single-nucleotide level, requires combining data from DNA processing methods including traditional (BS), oxidative (oxBS) or Tet-Assisted (TAB) bisulfite conversion. We introduce the R package MLML2R, which provides maximum likelihood estimates (MLE) of 5-mC and 5-hmC proportions. While all other available R packages provide 5-mC and 5-hmC MLEs only for the oxBS+BS combination, MLML2R also provides MLE for TAB combinations. For combinations of any two of the methods, we derived the pool-adjacent-violators algorithm (PAVA) exact constrained MLE in analytical form. For the…