Genome-wide methylation profiles of menstrual blood and vaginal fluid

The ability to predict the type of tissues or cells from molecular profiles of crime scene samples has practical implications in forensics. In order to identify body fluid-specific DNA methylation changes, genome-wide DNA methylation profiling was carried out for body fluids including menstrual blood and vaginal fluid obtained from 3 female donors aged 19, 27 and 38 years. The Illumina Infinium 450k Human DNA methylation Beadchip was used to obtain DNA methylation profiles across approximately 450,000 CpGs in bisulfite converted DNA. Samples included 3 of each vaginal fluid and menstrual bloods collected on the first, second and third days of menstrual bleeding. Bisulfite converted DNA from the 12 samples were hybridised to the Illumina Infinium 450k Human Methylation Beadchip