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. 2019 Jan 8;47(D1):D983-D988.
doi: 10.1093/nar/gky1027.

EWAS Atlas: a curated knowledgebase of epigenome-wide association studies

Mengwei Li  1   2   3 , Dong Zou  1   2 , Zhaohua Li  1   2   4 , Ran Gao  3   5 , Jian Sang  1   2   3 , Yuansheng Zhang  1   2   3 , Rujiao Li  1   2 , Lin Xia  1   2   3 , Tao Zhang  1   2   3 , Guangyi Niu  1   2   3 , Yiming Bao  1   2   3   4 , Zhang Zhang  1   2   3   5
Affiliations

EWAS Atlas: a curated knowledgebase of epigenome-wide association studies

Mengwei Li et al. Nucleic Acids Res. .

Abstract

Epigenome-Wide Association Study (EWAS) has become increasingly significant in identifying the associations between epigenetic variations and different biological traits. In this study, we develop EWAS Atlas (http://bigd.big.ac.cn/ewas), a curated knowledgebase of EWAS that provides a comprehensive collection of EWAS knowledge. Unlike extant data-oriented epigenetic resources, EWAS Atlas features manual curation of EWAS knowledge from extensive publications. In the current implementation, EWAS Atlas focuses on DNA methylation-one of the key epigenetic marks; it integrates a large number of 329 172 high-quality EWAS associations, involving 112 tissues/cell lines and covering 305 traits, 1830 cohorts and 390 ontology entities, which are completely based on manual curation from 649 studies reported in 401 publications. In addition, it is equipped with a powerful trait enrichment analysis tool, which is capable of profiling trait-trait and trait-epigenome relationships. Future developments include regular curation of recent EWAS publications, incorporation of more epigenetic marks and possible integration of EWAS with GWAS. Collectively, EWAS Atlas is dedicated to the curation, integration and standardization of EWAS knowledge and has the great potential to help researchers dissect molecular mechanisms of epigenetic modifications associated with biological traits.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(A) Statistics of EWAS publications. (B) Word cloud of traits.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The curation model adopted by EWAS Atlas. It is noted that eligible associations should have P-value < 1.0E–4 or adjusted P-value < 0.05.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Screenshot of web pages for (A) Trait, (B) Probe, (C) Gene, (D) Study and (E) Publication.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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