Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
Cell Stem Cell. 2011 Sep 2;9(3):193-204. doi: 10.1016/j.stem.2011.08.007.
One of the main regulators of gene expression during embryogenesis and stem cell differentiation is DNA methylation. The recent identification of hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) as a novel epigenetic mark sparked an intense effort to characterize its specialized enzymatic machinery and to understand the biological significance of 5hmC. The recent discovery of recurrent deletions and somatic mutations in the TET gene family, which includes proteins that can hydroxylate methylcytosine (5mC), in a large fraction of myeloid malignancies further suggested a key role for dynamic DNA methylation changes in the regulation of stem cell differentiation and transformation.
在胚胎发生和干细胞分化过程中,基因表达的主要调控因子之一是 DNA 甲基化。最近发现羟甲基胞嘧啶(5hmC)作为一种新的表观遗传标记,激发了人们强烈的兴趣来描述其特殊的酶学机制,并理解 5hmC 的生物学意义。最近在很大一部分髓系恶性肿瘤中发现 TET 基因家族(包括能够羟化甲基胞嘧啶(5mC)的蛋白质)的反复缺失和体细胞突变,进一步表明动态 DNA 甲基化变化在干细胞分化和转化的调控中起着关键作用。