Fig. 2: Schematic pipeline depicting the strategy of identifying key genes from DNA methylation and mRNA expression microarray data.

The method proceeds as follows:(1) identify significantly differentially methylated genes and expressed genes in the case and control groups; (2) retain those genes whose methylation and expression levels are highly anti-correlated; (3) enrich the gene ontology, KEGG pathway, and PPI networks of anti-correlated genes; (4) identify key genes from the intersection of statistical analysis, gene functional annotations, and interaction networks