MethFlowVM: a virtual machine for the integral analysis of bisulfite sequencing data

Abstract

The analysis of whole genome DNA methylation patterns is an important first step towards the understanding on how DNA methylation is involved in the regulation of gene expression and genome stability.\n\nPreviously, we published MethylExtract, a program for DNA methylation profiling and genotyping from the same sample. Over the last years we developed it further into a methylation analysis pipeline that allows to take full advantage of novel genome assembly models. The result is a new pipeline termed MethFlow which permits both, profiling of methylation levels and differential methylation analysis.\n\nFrequently DNA methylation research is carried out in the biomedical field, where privacy issues play an important role. Therefore we implemented the pipeline into a virtual machine termed MethFlowVM which shares with a web-server its user-friendliness however, the decisive advantage is that the sequencing data does not leave the user desktop or server and therefore no privacy issues do exist.\n\nThe virtual machine is available at: http://bioinfo2.uqr.es:8080/MethFlow/