Table 1.

How epigenomics is transforming the search for genetic causes of common human disease

Epigenome anatomy	Possible disease link	New approach to common disease search
Environmentally driven epigenetic variation	Epigenome changes in absence of sequence variant	Methylome arrays, capture bisulfite sequencing, ChIPseq
Regulatorysite or expression per se	Noncoding RNAs	RNAseq and methods above
Key disease sequences unlinked to target genes	Intra-and interchromosomal interactions	Chromatin network mapping; replication timing?
Regulatory sequence distant from gene	Co-regulated gene clusters	Genome-scale methylation; chromatin mapping
Sequence-defined methylation	Sequence variants controlling epigenome	Linked GWAS and epigenome studies
New class of Variably Methylated Regions	Sequence variants controlling epigenomic variance perse	New statistics for reexamining and integrating GWAS
Domain disruption, anchoring proteins	LOCKs and LADs	Native chromatin whole-genome analysis