DNA methylation episignature testing improves molecular diagnosis of Mendelian chromatinopathies

Abstract Purpose Chromatinopathies include more than 50 disorders caused by disease-causing variants of various components of chromatin structure and function. Many of these disorders exhibit unique genome-wide DNA methylation profiles, known as episignatures. In this study, the methylation profile of a large cohort of individuals with chromatinopathies was analyzed for episignature detection. Methods DNA methylation data was generated on extracted blood samples from 129 affected individuals with the Illumina Infinium EPIC arrays and analyzed using an established bioinformatic pipeline. Results The DNA methylation profiles matched and confirmed the sequence findings in both the discovery an…