Fig. 5

Differentially methylated genes are relevant to male fertility. A functional enrichment analysis was performed using DAVID, where genes containing DMCs (170 genes) were compared to those covered in the background CpGs10 (19,829 genes). The enrichment cluster with an EASE score of 1.84 is represented, with genes in the cluster displayed on the x-axis and the different terms on the y-axis. A correspondence between a gene and a term is indicated by a light blue color on the heatmap. B A systematic review of the literature was undertaken for all genes associated with DMCs that contained a gene name (n = 139). The NCBI Pubmed database was interrogated using the gene names successively associated with each of the following terms: “embryo*”, “sperm*” and “fertility”. Some genes matched with several terms and are represented in several categories, explaining why the total number of counts exceeded the number of unique genes of interest (46 unique genes)