22fc293ddc00fce956d75fbcdb237e5d19d08fd5
max
  Thu Sep 3 14:39:29 2026 -0700
Three more Imprinting subtracks on hg38: Geneimprint, Akbari iDMRs, OMIM

Geneimprint: the human catalog of imprinted and candidate imprinted genes
from geneimprint.com, 274 genes. The catalog gives only a cytogenetic band,
so symbols are resolved against the HGNC track, with fallbacks for small RNA
clusters and for symbols HGNC has retired.

Akbari iDMRs: the 192 imprinted differentially methylated regions that Akbari
et al. 2023 (PMID 36777186) compiled from five genome-wide studies. Their
published coordinates are 1-based inclusive, not bed, as their own PatMat
reader shows, so the starts are shifted.

OMIM: the 459 loci that OMIM curates as imprinted. That call is published only
through GeneScout and is in no OMIM download file, so the input is a GeneScout
export made by hand from a browser. OMIM phenotype entries, which are mapped
disease regions up to 90 Mb rather than gene positions, are left out.

Also unifies the color scheme across the collection, so vermillion always means
the maternal copy, blue the paternal copy and gray no parent of origin, and
relates the collection to the Human Methylation Atlas.

refs #37599

diff --git src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/human/hg38/methBaseAsm.html src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/human/hg38/methBaseAsm.html
index b137fc818a7..7c86132d86f 100644
--- src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/human/hg38/methBaseAsm.html
+++ src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/human/hg38/methBaseAsm.html
@@ -1,50 +1,47 @@
 <h2>Description</h2>
 
 <p>
-Most genes are expressed from both the maternal and the paternal copy of a
-chromosome. A small number of genes break this rule: they are
-<em>imprinted</em>, meaning that only the copy inherited from one parent is
-active while the other copy is silenced. The mark that keeps the two copies
-apart is DNA methylation. At an imprinted locus, one allele carries methylated
-CpG sites and the other does not, a pattern called allele-specific methylation
-(ASM). Regions with this pattern are candidates for imprinting control regions,
-the switches that set the expression of whole gene clusters.
+This track summarizes allele-specific methylation (ASM) across thousands of human methylomes. At an imprinted locus one allele carries methylated CpG sites and the other does not, so a region that shows this pattern in many independent samples is a candidate imprinting control region.
 </p>
 
 <p>
 Whole-genome bisulfite sequencing reads are long enough to cover several CpG
 sites at once, so the methylation states of neighboring sites on the same DNA
 molecule can be read together. When the reads at a locus fall into two clearly
 separated groups, one mostly methylated and one mostly unmethylated, that locus
 shows allele-specific methylation. This track shows, for every CpG site in the
 genome, the fraction of MethBase2 human methylomes in which the site was called
 part of an allelically methylated region (AMR). Values range from 0 to 1. High
 values mean that many independent samples show two differently methylated
 alleles at that site, which is the expected signature of a constitutive
 imprinted region. Lower but non-zero values point at loci where allele-specific
 methylation is restricted to certain tissues or is driven by sequence variation
 rather than by imprinting.
 </p>
 
 <p>
 The score is a summary across samples, not a measurement in any single sample.
 A value of 0.5 does not mean that half of the DNA molecules are methylated; it
 means that about half of the surveyed methylomes had an AMR call covering that
 CpG.
 </p>
 
+<p>
+See the <a href="hgTrackUi?g=imprinting">Imprinting</a> track collection page for background on genomic imprinting and for the color scheme shared by all of its subtracks.
+</p>
+
 <h2>Display Conventions and Configuration</h2>
 
 <p>
 The track is a signal graph with one value per CpG site. The default vertical
 range is 0 to 0.5, since even the strongest known imprinted regions rarely
 exceed that fraction across a set of samples this diverse. The range, the
 graph height, the smoothing window and the aggregation function can all be
 changed on the track configuration page. Positions between CpG sites carry no
 data and are drawn as gaps.
 </p>
 
 <p>
 The per-sample methylation levels, hypomethylated regions and read coverage
 that this summary is derived from are published by the Smith lab as a track
 hub, which can be loaded from
@@ -71,33 +68,32 @@
 methylation state and one in which the two alleles have separate states. The
 window is called an AMR when the two-allele model fits significantly better,
 using a likelihood ratio test with a false discovery rate correction; windows
 need at least 4x mean coverage per CpG to be tested, and neighboring AMRs closer
 than 1 kb are merged. The statistical model is described in Fang et al. (2012).
 The score shown here is the number of methylomes whose AMR set covers a given
 CpG, divided by the number of methylomes tested.
 </p>
 
 <p>
 The data file was downloaded from
 <a href="http://smithlab.usc.edu/methbase/data/common/hg38/hg38.asm.bw" target="_blank">http://smithlab.usc.edu/methbase/data/common/hg38/hg38.asm.bw</a>,
 the "common" section of the MethBase2 track hub at
 <a href="http://smithlab.usc.edu/trackdata/methylation/hub.txt" target="_blank">http://smithlab.usc.edu/trackdata/methylation/hub.txt</a>.
 The file is a bigWig and was used as it is, without reformatting or
-recalculation; it covers 29,401,795 CpG positions on the 25 main chromosomes
-(chr1 to chr22, chrX, chrY, chrM) and no positions were dropped. The steps we
-ran are documented in the
+recalculation. It carries a value at each of 29,401,795 CpG positions, on
+chr1 to chr22, chrX, chrY and chrM. The steps we ran are documented in the
 <a href="https://github.com/ucscGenomeBrowser/kent/blob/master/src/hg/makeDb/doc/hg38/imprinting.txt" target="_blank">imprinting makeDoc</a>.
 </p>
 
 <h2>Data Access</h2>
 
 <p>
 The data can be explored interactively in table format with the
 <a href="../cgi-bin/hgTables">Table Browser</a> or the
 <a href="../cgi-bin/hgIntegrator">Data Integrator</a> and exported from there to
 spreadsheet or tab-sep tables. From scripts, the data can be accessed through
 our <a href="https://api.genome.ucsc.edu">API</a>, track=<i>methBaseAsm</i>.
 </p>
 
 <p>
 For automated download and analysis, the annotation is stored in a bigWig file