title: Conserved and divergent patterns of DNA methylation in higher vertebrates.
abstract: DNA methylation in the genome plays a fundamental role in the regulation of gene expression and is widespread in the genome of eukaryotic species. For example, in higher vertebrates, there is a "global" methylation pattern involving complete methylation of CpG sites genome-wide, except in promoter regions that are typically enriched for CpG dinucleotides, or so called "CpG islands." Here, we comprehensively examined and compared the distribution of CpG sites within ten model eukaryotic species and linked the observed patterns to the role of DNA methylation in controlling gene transcription. The analysis revealed two distinct but conserved methylation patterns for gene promoters in human and mouse genomes, involving genes with distinct distributions of promoter CpGs and gene expression patterns. Comparative analysis with four other higher vertebrates revealed that the primary regulatory role of the DNA methylation system is highly conserved in higher vertebrates.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics & Computational Biology, SKLG, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China School of Biosciences, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics & Computational Biology, SKLG, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Biosciences, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics & Computational Biology, SKLG, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Luwen
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Biosciences, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom zwluo@fudan.edu.cn l.j.leach@bham.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Lindsey
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Leach
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics & Computational Biology, SKLG, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China School of Biosciences, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom zwluo@fudan.edu.cn l.j.leach@bham.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Zewei
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Luo
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018899:CpG Islands; D019175:DNA Methylation; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
keywords: CpG sites within promoters; comparative phylogenetic analysis; conservation and divergence in DNA methylation; eukaryotes; genome-wide CpG site distribution