Fig. 1.

a Genome wide distribution of 10,772 CpGs whose DNA methylation progressively changes with breast cancer progression from stages 1 to 4. b Boxplot of 8238 significantly (p value< 0.05) demethylated (left panel) and 2408 hypermethylated (right panel) CpGs associated with breast cancer progression (delta value between breast cancer stages and average beta values of all normal individuals) in stages 1, 2, 3 and 4 in breast cancer. c Heatmap and hierarchical clustering of top 89 CpG whose quantitative level of DNA methylation correlate with progression (p < 0.01, r > 0.7, r < − 0.7). d Principal component analysis of unaffected females (N1-N9), females with breast cancer stage 1(St1.1-St1.10), stage 2 (St2.1-St2-9), stage 3 (St3.1-St3.5) and stage 4 (St4.1-St4.4) methylation profiles, plot show principal component 1 (coordinate 1) and principal component 2 (coordinate 2) for each sample. Close to each other samples are similar in their methylation profile