BIMMER: a novel algorithm for detecting differential DNA methylation regions from MBDCap-seq data.

DNA methylation is a common epigenetic marker that regulates gene expression. A robust and cost-effective way for measuring whole genome methylation is Methyl-CpG binding domain-based capture followed by sequencing (MBDCap-seq). In this study, we proposed BIMMER, a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for differential Methylation Regions (DMRs) identification, where HMMs were proposed to model the methylation status in normal and cancer samples in the first layer and another HMM was introduced to model the relationship between differential methylation and methylation statuses in normal and cancer samples. To carry out the prediction for BIMMER, an Expectation-Maximization algorithm was derived. BIMMER was validated on the simulated data and applied to real MBDCap-seq data of normal and cancer samples. BIMMER revealed that 8.83% of the breast cancer genome are differentially methylated and the majority are hypo-methylated in breast cancer.

Prediction of Human Performance Using Electroencephalography under Different Indoor Room Temperatures.

Varying indoor environmental conditions is known to affect office worker’s performance; wherein past research studies have reported the effects of unfavorable indoor temperature and air quality causing sick building syndrome (SBS) among office workers. Thus, investigating factors that can predict performance in changing indoor environments have become a highly important research topic bearing significant impact in our society. While past research studies have attempted to determine predictors for performance, they do not provide satisfactory prediction ability. Therefore, in this preliminary study, we attempt to predict performance during office-work tasks triggered by different indoor room temperatures (22.2 °C and 30 °C) from human brain signals recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). Seven participants were recruited, from whom EEG, skin temperature, heart rate and thermal survey questionnaires were collected. Regression analyses were carried out to investigate the effectiveness of using EEG power spectral densities (PSD) as predictors of performance. Our results indicate EEG PSDs as predictors provide the highest R² (> 0.70), that is 17 times higher than using other physiological signals as predictors and is more robust. Finally, the paper provides insight on the selected predictors based on brain activity patterns for low- and high-performance levels under different indoor-temperatures.