methylclock: a Bioconductor package to estimate DNA methylation age

Bioinformatics. 2021 Jul 19;37(12):1759-1760. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa825.

Abstract

Motivation: Ageing is a biological and psychosocial process related to diseases and mortality. It correlates with changes in DNA methylation (DNAm) in all human tissues. Therefore, epigenetic markers can be used to estimate biological age using DNAm profiling across tissues.

Results: We developed a Bioconductor package that allows computation of several existing DNAm adult/childhood and gestational age clocks. Functions to visualize the DNAm age prediction versus chronological age and the correlation between DNAm clocks are also available as well as other features, such as missing data imputation of cell types' estimates, that are required for DNAm age clocks.

Availability and implementation: https://github.com/isglobal-brge/methylclock.

Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aging / genetics
  • Child
  • DNA Methylation*
  • Epigenesis, Genetic*
  • Epigenomics
  • Humans