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Ables participant: Clinical Epigenetic team at Telethon Kids Institute

Project title

The Effect of a Mediterranean Diet on Blood DNA Methylation Profiles in Pregnant Women.

Collaborators and funding

Contact(s)

Project description and aims

This project aims to determine whether a mediterranean diet induces methylation changes across the genome of blood cells in pregnant women. This project will analyse the DNA methylation patterns of blood samples of 52 pregnant women that were collected for the ORIGINS BIOMOOD study. Methylation patterns will be measured using the TWIST human methylome panel, a library preparation workflow that targets 3.98M CpG sites in biologically relevant methylation markers within the human genome (Twist Human Methylome Panel, 2024) . Sequenced libraries will be processed using the Nextflow nf-core methyl-seq pipeline. Subsequent analysis will assess the DNA methylation patterns and potential biological consequences between the women stratified into high and low alignment to a mediterranean diet throughout pregnancy. This project aims to provide additional mechanistic means for the role of the mediterranean diet on the epigenome, contributing to the growing field of nutrigenomic research.

Details about The ORIGINS Study can be accessed via the following link: https://originsproject.telethonkids.org.au/

How is ABLeS supporting this work?

This work is supported through the production bioinformatics scheme provided by ABLeS. The supports includes unlimited temporary storage on scratch, 5 TB permenant storage and 50 KSUs per quarter.

Expected outputs enabled by participation in ABLeS

ABLeS will enable the processing of raw methylation sequenced data (fastq files) via the nf-core methylseq pipeline to produce BedGraph formatted files for further analysis. Data will be stored in the ORIGINS databank and will be made freely available via the GEO data repository. The researchers from this study hope to publish these findings from this research in journals such as Frontiers in Nutrition.


These details have been provided by project members at project initiation. For more information on the project, please consult the contact(s) or project links above.