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

TLDR

Epigenome‑Wide Association Study (EWAS) has become increasingly significant in identifying the associations between epigenetic variations and different biological traits. The study develops EWAS Atlas, a curated knowledgebase of EWAS, aiming to provide a comprehensive collection of EWAS knowledge and to support future curation and integration with other omics. EWAS Atlas is manually curated from 649 studies in 401 publications, contains 329,172 high‑quality DNA‑methylation associations across 112 tissues/cell lines, 305 traits, 1830 cohorts and 390 ontology entities, and offers a trait‑enrichment analysis tool to profile trait‑trait and trait‑epigenome relationships. EWAS Atlas is dedicated to curating, integrating, and standardizing EWAS knowledge, offering researchers a resource to dissect molecular mechanisms of epigenetic modifications linked to biological traits.

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.