Department of Molecular Biology, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Front Genet. 2014 Dec 9;5:428. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2014.00428. eCollection 2014.
Deoxyribonucleic acid methylation is a long known epigenetic mark involved in many biological processes and the 'readers' of this mark belong to several distinct protein families that 'read' and 'translate' the methylation mark into a function. Methyl-CpG binding domain proteins belong to one of these families that are associated with transcriptional activation/repression, regulation of chromatin structure, pluripotency, development, and differentiation. Discovered decades ago, the systematic determination of the genomic binding sites of these readers and their epigenome make-up at a genome-wide level revealed the tip of the functional iceberg. This review focuses on two members of the methyl binding proteins, namely MBD2 and MBD3 that reside in very similar complexes, yet appear to have very different biological roles. We provide a comprehensive comparison of their genome-wide binding features and emerging roles in gene regulation.
脱氧核糖核酸甲基化是一种长期以来已知的表观遗传标记，涉及许多生物过程，而这种标记的“读取者”属于几个不同的蛋白质家族，它们“读取”并“翻译”甲基化标记为功能。甲基化 CpG 结合域蛋白属于其中一个家族，与转录激活/抑制、染色质结构调控、多能性、发育和分化有关。几十年前发现，在全基因组水平上系统地确定这些“读取者”及其表观基因组的基因组结合位点揭示了功能冰山的一角。这篇综述集中讨论了甲基结合蛋白中的两个成员，即 MBD2 和 MBD3，它们存在于非常相似的复合物中，但似乎具有非常不同的生物学作用。我们对它们的全基因组结合特征和在基因调控中的新兴作用进行了全面比较。
