The BIG Data Center of Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences upgraded the Methylation Bank (Methbank), which has been published online in Nucleic Acids Research in November 2017. In contrast to its first version, the current version of Methbank 3.0 integrates high-quality DNA methylomes across a wider variety of species and provides a friendly interface for users to interactive browse, query and visualize methylation data. In addition, MethBank 3.0 is significantly enhanced by equipping with more user-friendly web interfaces for data presentation, search and visualization and improving the functionalities for data annotation, which accordingly enables identification of not only gene methylation profiles but also DMCs, DMRs, DMPs, methylation sites in close association with age and sites with constant methylation levels across different ages. It consequently allows users to retrieve genome-wide methylation profiles as well as specific gene/regional methylation levels across all collected samples and also provides two tools for the prediction of methylation age and the identification of differentially methylated promoter (DMP). Contact: Prof. ZHANG Zhang Email: zhangzhang@big.ac.cn
MethBank is dedicated to integrating genome-wide DNA methylation data for a wide variety of species. In contrast to the previous version that only contains 18 single-base resolution methylomes (SRMs) of embryonic development of two animals, MethBank 3.0 is upgraded significantly by incorporating 34 consensus reference methylomes (CRMs) compiled from 4,577 healthy human samples at different ages and 336 SRMs under different developments and stress conditions of five economically important plants.
DNA methylation is a major epigenetic modification, and plays important roles in human diseases and aging, embryonic development of animals as well as growth and development of plants. Comprehensive integration of methylation data is of great help for systematic exploration of DNA methylation signatures in epigenetic studies. As an important resource in the BIG Data Center, MethBank will be frequently upgraded and improved. The ultimate goal of MethBank is to serve as a public methylation databank by the community, for the community and of the community.
This study was supported by Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Key Research & Development Program of China, National Key Research Program of China, National Programs for High Technology Research and Development etc.
