Epigenetic alterations in blood mirror age-associated DNA methylation and gene expression changes in human liver

Abstract

Aim: To study the impact of aging on DNA methylation and mRNA expression in human liver. Experimental procedures: We analysed genome-wide DNA methylation and gene expression in human liver samples using Illumina 450K and HumanHT12 expression BeadChip arrays. Results: DNA methylation analysis of ∼455,000 CpG sites in human liver revealed that age was significantly associated with altered DNA methylation of 20,396 CpG sites. Comparison of liver methylation data with published methylation data in other tissues showed that vast majority of the age-associated significant CpG sites overlapped between liver and blood, whereas a smaller overlap was found between liver and pancreatic islets or adipose tissue, respectively. We identified 151 genes whose liver expression also correlated with age. Conclusions: We identified age-associated DNA methylation and expression changes in human liver that are partly reflected by epigenetic alterations in blood.