title: Heterogeneous pattern of DNA methylation in developmentally important genes correlates with its chromatin conformation.
abstract: DNA methylation is a major epigenetic modification, playing a crucial role in the development and differentiation of higher organisms. DNA methylation is also known to regulate transcription by gene repression. Various developmental genes such as c-mos, HoxB5, Sox11, and Sry show tissue-specific gene expression that was shown to be regulated by promoter DNA methylation. The aim of the present study is to investigate the establishment of chromatin marks (active or repressive) in relation to heterogeneous methylation in the promoter regions of these developmentally important genes.
  
  
  
  Chromatin-immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays were performed to immuno-precipitate chromatin by antibodies against both active (H3K4me3) and repressive (H3K9me3) chromatin regions. The analysis of ChIP results showed that both the percentage input and fold enrichment of activated chromatin was higher in tissues expressing the respective genes as compared to the tissues not expressing the same set of genes. This was true for all the genes selected for the study (c-mos, HoxB5, Sox11, and Sry). These findings illustrate that inconsistent DNA methylation patterns (sporadic, mosaic and heterogeneous) may also influence gene regulation, thereby resulting in the modulation of chromatin conformation.
  
  
  
  These findings illustrate that various patterns of DNA methylation (asynchronous, mosaic and heterogeneous) correlates with chromatin modification, resulting in the gene regulation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biotechnology, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, 211004, India.
authors.forename: Puja
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sinha
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.
authors.forename: Kiran
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.affiliation: Department of Biotechnology, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, 211004, India. manishas@mnnit.ac.in.
authors.forename: Manisha
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sachan
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002843:Chromatin / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D042002:Chromatin Assembly and Disassembly; D047369:Chromatin Immunoprecipitation; D019175:DNA Methylation; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D016258:Genes, mos; D018398:Homeodomain Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D051379:Mice; D055751:SOXC Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics; D051876:Sex-Determining Region Y Protein / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D002843:Chromatin; D018398:Homeodomain Proteins; C053925:Hoxb5 protein, mouse; D055751:SOXC Transcription Factors; D051876:Sex-Determining Region Y Protein; C490793:Sox11 protein, mouse; C497746:Sry protein, mouse
keywords: C-mos; Chromatin conformation; Chromatin-immunoprecipitation (ChIP); DNA methylation; HoxB5; Sox11; Tissue-specific gene expression