Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32299339›Full record

ArticleBMC genomics2020

Epigenetic pacemaker: closed form algebraic solutions.

Sagi Snir

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in BMC genomics, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Sagi SnirDepartment of Evolutionary & Environmental Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. ssagi@research.haifa.ac.il.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundDNA methylation is widely used as a biomarker in crucial medical applications as well as for human age prediction of very high accuracy. This biomarker is based on the methylation status of several hundred CpG sites. In a recent line of publications we have adapted a versatile concept from evolutionary biology - the Universal Pacemaker (UPM) - to the setting of epigenetic aging and denoted it the Epigenetic PaceMaker (EPM). The EPM, as opposed to other epigenetic clocks, is not confined to specific pattern of aging, and the epigenetic age of the individual is inferred independently of other individuals. This allows an explicit modeling of aging trends, in particular non linear relationship between chronological and epigenetic age. In one of these recent works, we have presented an algorithmic improvement based on a two-step conditional expectation maximization (CEM) algorithm to arrive at a critical point on the likelihood surface. The algorithm alternates between a time step and a site step while advancing on the likelihood surface.

resultsHere we introduce non trivial improvements to these steps that are essential for analyzing data sets of realistic magnitude in a manageable time and space. These structural improvements are based on insights from linear algebra and symbolic algebra tools, providing us greater understanding of the degeneracy of the complex problem space. This understanding in turn, leads to the complete elimination of the bottleneck of cumbersome matrix multiplication and inversion, yielding a fast closed form solution in both steps of the CEM.In the experimental results part, we compare the CEM algorithm over several data sets and demonstrate the speedup obtained by the closed form solutions. Our results support the theoretical analysis of this improvement.

conclusionsThese improvements enable us to increase substantially the scale of inputs analyzed by the method, allowing us to apply the new approach to data sets that could not be analyzed before.

Indexed as

AgingAlgorithmsBiological ClocksCpG IslandsDNA MethylationEpigenesis, GeneticEpigenomicsGenomicsHumansLikelihood FunctionsModels, GeneticConditional Expectation MaximizationEpigeneticsMatrix MultiplicationSymbolic AlgebraUniversal PaceMaker

Identifiers

PMID32299339
PMCPMC7161103

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.