Reconstructing premortem DNA methylation levels in ancient DNA has led to breakthrough studies such as the prediction of anatomical features of the Denisovan. These studies rely on computationally inferring methylation levels from damage signals in naturally deaminated cytosines, which requires expensive high-coverage genomes. Here, we test two methods for direct methylation measurement developed for modern DNA based on either bisulfite or enzymatic methylation treatments. Bisulfite treatment shows the least reduction in DNA yields as well as the least biases during methylation conversion, demonstrating that this method can be successfully applied to ancient DNA.

中文翻译：

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改进了对古代 DNA 中甲基化的检测


在古代 DNA 中重建死前 DNA 甲基化水平导致了突破性的研究，例如预测丹尼索瓦人的解剖特征。这些研究依赖于从天然脱氨基胞嘧啶中的损伤信号中计算推断甲基化水平，这需要昂贵的高覆盖率基因组。在这里，我们测试了两种基于亚硫酸氢盐或酶甲基化处理的现代 DNA 开发的直接甲基化测量方法。亚硫酸氢盐处理显示 DNA 产量的降低最小，甲基化转化过程中的偏差最小，表明该方法可以成功应用于古代 DNA。