An integrative epidermal epigenome-transcriptome reference for cytokine regulation
- 1Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Abstract
Cytokines serve as pathogenic drivers and therapeutic targets in inflammatory and autoimmune skin diseases. While blood-based cytokine studies have highlighted the importance of genetic and epigenetic regulation, they fail to capture the tissue heterogeneity of skin diseases. To characterize the epigenetic regulation of skin cytokines, we collected and analyzed matched epidermal DNA methylome, transcriptome, and cytokine profiles of 120 healthy individuals, establishing a reference resource that can be applied to external skin disease and treatment datasets. Our analysis identified 4187 differentially methylated probes and 461 differentially methylated and expressed genes associated with skin cytokines, revealing tissue-specific patterns of epigenetic regulation. Using the RNA expression and DNA methylation levels of these differentially methylated and expressed genes, we developed omics risk scores for each cytokine. Notably, transcriptomic scores for 6 cytokines showed relatively higher predictive performance in the discovery cohort (R2 range: 30–58%) and showed disease-associated differences when applied to external public datasets. In addition, we developed CytoEpi (https://cytoepi.shinyapps.io/cytoepi/), a web application for broader community access and exploration of these cytokine regulatory insights. Overall, this study establishes a foundational multi-omics reference resource on cytokine regulation in healthy skin and provides a useful resource to advance future research into the mechanisms and treatment of inflammatory skin diseases.
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BibTeX
@article{tian2026integrative,
title = {{An integrative epidermal epigenome-transcriptome reference for cytokine regulation}},
author = {Shenghua Tian and Bingjie Li and Tao Huang and Sijia Wang},
journal = {JID Innovations},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1016/j.xjidi.2026.100550},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xjidi.2026.100550},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - An integrative epidermal epigenome-transcriptome reference for cytokine regulation
AU - Shenghua Tian
AU - Bingjie Li
AU - Tao Huang
AU - Sijia Wang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/06
JO - JID Innovations
DO - 10.1016/j.xjidi.2026.100550
UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xjidi.2026.100550
AB - Cytokines serve as pathogenic drivers and therapeutic targets in inflammatory and autoimmune skin diseases. While blood-based cytokine studies have highlighted the importance of genetic and epigenetic regulation, they fail to capture the tissue heterogeneity of skin diseases. To characterize the epigenetic regulation of skin cytokines, we collected and analyzed matched epidermal DNA methylome, transcriptome, and cytokine profiles of 120 healthy individuals, establishing a reference resource that can be applied to external skin disease and treatment datasets. Our analysis identified 4187 differentially methylated probes and 461 differentially methylated and expressed genes associated with skin cytokines, revealing tissue-specific patterns of epigenetic regulation. Using the RNA expression and DNA methylation levels of these differentially methylated and expressed genes, we developed omics risk scores for each cytokine. Notably, transcriptomic scores for 6 cytokines showed relatively higher predictive performance in the discovery cohort (R2 range: 30–58%) and showed disease-associated differences when applied to external public datasets. In addition, we developed CytoEpi (https://cytoepi.shinyapps.io/cytoepi/), a web application for broader community access and exploration of these cytokine regulatory insights. Overall, this study establishes a foundational multi-omics reference resource on cytokine regulation in healthy skin and provides a useful resource to advance future research into the mechanisms and treatment of inflammatory skin diseases.
SN - 2667-0267
ER -