Ultra-Deep Bisulfite Sequencing to Detect Specific DNA Methylation Patterns of Minor Cell Types in Heterogeneous Cell Populations: An Example of the Pituitary Tissue

DNA methylation is an epigenetic modification important for cell fate determination and cell type-specific gene expression. Transcriptional regulatory regions of the mammalian genome contain a large number of tissue/cell type-dependent differentially methylated regions (T-DMRs) with DNA methylation patterns crucial for transcription of the corresponding genes. In general, tissues consist of multiple cell types in various proportions, making it difficult to detect T-DMRs of minor cell types in tissues. The present study attempts to detect T-DMRs of minor cell types in tissues by ultra-deep bisulfite sequencing of cell type-restricted genes and to assume proportions of minor cell types based on DNA methylation patterns of sequenced reads. For this purpose, we focused on transcriptionally active hypomethylated alleles (Hypo-alleles), which can be recognized by the high ratio of unmethylated CpGs in each sequenced read (allele). The pituitary gland contains multiple cell types including five hormone-expressing cell types and stem/progenitor cells, each of which is a minor cell type in the pituitary tissue. By ultra-deep sequencing of more than 100 reads for detection of Hypo-alleles in pituitary cell type-specific genes, we identified T-DMRs specific to hormone-expressing cells and stem/progenitor cells and used them to estimate the proportions of each cell type based on the Hypo-allele ratio in pituitary tissue. Therefore, introduction of the novel Hypo-allele concept enabled us to detect T-DMRs of minor cell types with estimation of their proportions in the tissue by ultra-deep bisulfite sequencing.