Global CpG methylation analysis of primary endothelial cells before and after TNFa stimulation

Endothelial cells are a primary site of leukocyte recruitment during inflammation. An increase in tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFa) levels as a result of infection or some autoimmune diseases can trigger this process. Several autoimmune diseases are now treated with TNFa inhibitors. However, genomic alterations that occur as a result of TNF-mediated inflammation are not well understood. To investigate molecular targets and networks resulting from increased TNFa, we measured DNA methylation and gene expression in 40 human umbilical vein endothelial cell primary cell lines before and 24 hours after stimulation with TNFa via microarray. The final dataset used for analysis consisted of 37 sample pairs and 818,391 CpG sites.