DeepCpG: accurate prediction of single-cell DNA methylation states using deep learning

Abstract Recent technological advances have enabled DNA methylation to be assayed at single-cell resolution. However, current protocols are limited by incomplete CpG coverage and hence methods to predict missing methylation states are critical to enable genome-wide analyses. We report DeepCpG, a com...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Christof Angermueller, Heather J. Lee, Wolf Reik, Oliver Stegle
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2017-04-01
Series:Genome Biology
Subjects:
Online Access:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13059-017-1189-z
Description
Summary:Abstract Recent technological advances have enabled DNA methylation to be assayed at single-cell resolution. However, current protocols are limited by incomplete CpG coverage and hence methods to predict missing methylation states are critical to enable genome-wide analyses. We report DeepCpG, a computational approach based on deep neural networks to predict methylation states in single cells. We evaluate DeepCpG on single-cell methylation data from five cell types generated using alternative sequencing protocols. DeepCpG yields substantially more accurate predictions than previous methods. Additionally, we show that the model parameters can be interpreted, thereby providing insights into how sequence composition affects methylation variability.
ISSN:1474-760X