Figure 3. Principle of DMR detection by BSAnalyzer.

(A) Firstly, starting from one end of the genome to search for a seed region (i.e., 500 bps) using a sliding window. (B) If the seed region is located, Mann-Whitney test will be used to test if the seed region is a differentially methylated seed region. (C) Two adjacent differentially methylated seed regions are merged into one extended seed region (seed region extension). (D) Two discontinued differentially methylated regions are further merged together if they are within a certain distance (e.g. less than 1000 bps) for further differential methylation test using χ2 test.