Fig. 4

Deconvolution of cell mixtures based on individual cell type-specific CpGs. a Heatmap of mean β values of the reference matrix (450K data of the training set), which is used for deconvolution. b Deconvolution of in vitro neuron-glia-DNA-mixes from dataset GSE41826 [68]. The predicted cell fractions by our NNLS-based deconvolution with eight CpGs are depicted. c Deconvolution of eight different in vitro DNA mixes from dataset GSE122126 [7]. The real composition of DNA fractions is plotted next to the predictions by the signatures of Moss et al. (estimates for leukocyte subsets, epithelial cells, and others were combined). The estimates with our NNLS model closely resembled the DNA mixtures of different cell types. Data for DNA mix 4 was lacking one of the eight CpGs and was therefore excluded. d Deconvolution of in vitro DNA mixes measured with pyrosequencing. Five different mixes of five different cell types in different proportions were measured at the eight different sites. Shown are mixed versus estimated cellular fractions with our NNLS-based deconvolution