title: Mobility of DNA sequence recognition domains in DNA methyltransferases suggests epigenetics-driven adaptive evolution.
abstract: DNA methylation is one of the best studied epigenetic modifications observed in prokaryotes as well as eukaryotes. It affects nearby gene expression. Most DNA methylation reactions in prokaryotes are catalyzed by a DNA methyltransferase, the modification enzyme of a restriction-modification (RM) system. Its target recognition domain (TRD) recognizes a specific DNA sequence for methylation. In this commentary, we review recent evidence for movement of TRDs between non-orthologous genes and movement within a gene. These movements are likely mediated by DNA recombination machinery, and are expected to alter the methylation status of a genome. Such alterations potentially lead to changes in global gene expression pattern and various phenotypes. The targets of natural selection in adaptive evolution might be these diverse methylomes rather than diverse genome sequences, the target according to the current paradigm in biology. This "epigenetics-driven adaptive evolution" hypothesis can explain several observations in the evolution of prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Genome Sciences; Graduate School of Frontier Sciences; University of Tokyo; Tokyo, Japan ; Institute of Medical Science; University of Tokyo; Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshikazu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Furuta
authors.forename: Ichizo
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kobayashi
keywords: DNA methylation; Helicobacter pylori; domain movement; epigenetics; evolution; genome evolution; methylome; protein evolution; restriction-modification