ELMER v.2: An R/Bioconductor package to reconstruct gene regulatory networks from DNA methylation and transcriptome profiles

Abstract

Motivation: DNA methylation has been used to identify functional changes at transcriptional enhancers and other cis-regulatory modules (CRMs) in tumors and other disease tissues. Our R/Bioconductor package ELMER (Enhancer Linking by Methylation/Expression Relationships) provides a systematic approach that reconstructs altered gene regulatory networks (GRNs) by combining enhancer methylation and gene expression data derived from the same sample set. Results: We present a completely revised version 2 of ELMER that provides numerous new features including an optional web-based interface and a new Supervised Analysis mode to use pre-defined sample groupings. We show that this approach can identify GRNs associated with many new Master Regulators including KLF5 in breast cancer. Availability: ELMER v.2 is available as an R/Bioconductor package at http://bioconductor.org/ packages/ELMER/