Demethylation of CpG islands in embryonic cells

Dale Frank*, Ilana Keshet, Moshe Shani, Alex Levine, Aharon Razin, Howard Cedar

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

133 Scopus citations

Abstract

DNA in differentiated somatic cells has a fixed pattern of methylation, which is faithfully copied after replication. By contrast, the methylation patterns of many tissue-specific and some housekeeping genes are altered during normal development1. This modification of DNA methylation in the embryo has also been observed in transgenic mice and in transfection experiments2. Here we report the fate in mice of an in vitro-methylated adenine phosphoribosyltransferase transgene. The entire 5′ CpG island region became demethylated, whereas the 3′ end of the gene remained modified and was even methylated de novo at additional sites. Transfection experiments in vitro show that the demethylation is rapid, is specific for embryonic cell-types and affects a variety of different CpG island sequences. This suggests that gene sequences can be recognized in the early embryo and imprinted with the correct methylation pattern through a combination of demethylation and de novo methylation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)239-241
Number of pages3
JournalNature
Volume351
Issue number6323
DOIs
StatePublished - 1991

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