Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, 211 Koshland Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Science. 2010 May 14;328(5980):916-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1186366. Epub 2010 Apr 15.
Eukaryotic cytosine methylation represses transcription but also occurs in the bodies of active genes, and the extent of methylation biology conservation is unclear. We quantified DNA methylation in 17 eukaryotic genomes and found that gene body methylation is conserved between plants and animals, whereas selective methylation of transposons is not. We show that methylation of plant transposons in the CHG context extends to green algae and that exclusion of histone H2A.Z from methylated DNA is conserved between plants and animals, and we present evidence for RNA-directed DNA methylation of fungal genes. Our data demonstrate that extant DNA methylation systems are mosaics of conserved and derived features, and indicate that gene body methylation is an ancient property of eukaryotic genomes.
真核生物胞嘧啶甲基化抑制转录，但也发生在活性基因的主体中，甲基化的生物学保守程度尚不清楚。我们定量分析了 17 种真核生物的基因组中的 DNA 甲基化，发现基因主体甲基化在植物和动物之间是保守的，而转座子的选择性甲基化则不然。我们表明，植物转座子在 CHG 背景下的甲基化延伸到绿藻中，并且植物和动物之间甲基化 DNA 排除组蛋白 H2A.Z 是保守的，我们还提供了真菌基因的 RNA 指导的 DNA 甲基化的证据。我们的数据表明，现存的 DNA 甲基化系统是保守和衍生特征的镶嵌体，并表明基因主体甲基化是真核生物基因组的古老属性。
