- Lu, Ake T;
- Narayan, Pritika;
- Grant, Matthew J;
- Langfelder, Peter;
- Wang, Nan;
- Kwak, Seung;
- Wilkinson, Hilary;
- Chen, Richard Z;
- Chen, Jian;
- Simon Bawden, C;
- Rudiger, Skye R;
- Ciosi, Marc;
- Chatzi, Afroditi;
- Maxwell, Alastair;
- Hore, Timothy A;
- Aaronson, Jeff;
- Rosinski, Jim;
- Preiss, Alicia;
- Vogt, Thomas F;
- Coppola, Giovanni;
- Monckton, Darren;
- Snell, Russell G;
- William Yang, X;
- Horvath, Steve
Although Huntington's disease (HD) is a well studied Mendelian genetic disorder, less is known about its associated epigenetic changes. Here, we characterize DNA methylation levels in six different tissues from 3 species: a mouse huntingtin (Htt) gene knock-in model, a transgenic HTT sheep model, and humans. Our epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) of human blood reveals that HD mutation status is significantly (p < 10-7) associated with 33 CpG sites, including the HTT gene (p = 6.5 × 10-26). These Htt/HTT associations were replicated in the Q175 Htt knock-in mouse model (p = 6.0 × 10-8) and in the transgenic sheep model (p = 2.4 × 10-88). We define a measure of HD motor score progression among manifest HD cases based on multiple clinical assessments. EWAS of motor progression in manifest HD cases exhibits significant (p < 10-7) associations with methylation levels at three loci: near PEX14 (p = 9.3 × 10-9), GRIK4 (p = 3.0 × 10-8), and COX4I2 (p = 6.5 × 10-8). We conclude that HD is accompanied by profound changes of DNA methylation levels in three mammalian species.