iDNA-ITLM: An interpretable and transferable learning model for identifying DNA methylation

In this study, from the perspective of image processing, we propose the iDNA-ITLM model, using a novel data enhance strategy by continuously self-replicating a short DNA sequence into a longer DNA sequence and then embedding it into a high-dimensional matrix to enlarge the receptive field, for identifying DNA methylation sites. Our model consistently outperforms the current state-of-the-art sequence-based DNA methylation site recognition methods when evaluated on 17 benchmark datasets that cover multiple species and include three DNA methylation modifications (4mC, 5hmC, and 6mA). The experimental results demonstrate the robustness and superior performance of our model across these datasets. In addition, our model can transfer learning to RNA methylation sequences and produce good results without modifying the hyperparameters in the model. The proposed iDNA-ITLM model can be considered a universal predictor across DNA and RNA methylation species.