miR2Meth: An R package for dissecting DNA methylation heterogeneity at microRNA promoters
Ying Shan, Xiaoshan Rong, Andrew E. Teschendorff, Zhen YangAbstract
Aberrant expression of microRNAs (miRNAs) has been found in prevalent cancer types, yet the underlying mechanisms remain largely unexplored due to a lack of analytical tools. Studies have shown that DNA methylation (DNAm) plays a significant role in regulating miRNA expression. Here, we present miR2Meth, an R package to construct DNAm profiles for miRNAs by mapping the probes from the Illumina methylation BeadArray platforms to miRNA promoters. By integrating miRNA expression data, researchers are able to identify aberrant miRNAs associated with promoter methylation dysregulation. This software provides an easy‐to‐use tool to investigate the relationships between miRNAs and DNAm in human diseases. miR2Meth is freely available at GitHub website (github.com/zyangx/miR2Meth).