DNA methylation represses transcription in vivo

Zahava Siegfried, Sharon Eden, Monica Mendelsohn, Xu Feng, Ben Zion Tsuberi, Howard Cedar*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

300 Scopus citations

Abstract

DNA in somatic tissue is characterized by a bimodal pattern of methylation, which is established in the animal through a series of developmental events. In the mouse blastula, most DNA is unmethylated, but after implantation a wave of de novo methylation modifies most of the genome, excluding the majority of CpG islands, which are mainly associated with housekeeping genes. This genomic methylation pattern is broadly maintained during the life of the organism by maintenance methylation, and generally correlates with gene expression. Experiments both in vitro and in vivo indicate that methylation inhibits transcription. It has not yet been possible, however, to determine the role of DNA methylation on specific sequences during normal development. Cis-acting regulatory elements and trans-acting factors appear to be involved in both stage- and tissue-specific demethylation processes. Sp1-like elements have a key role in protecting the CpG island of Aprt (encoding adenine phosphoribosyltransferase) from de novo methylation, and when these elements are specifically mutated, the Aprt CpG island becomes methylated in transgenic mice. We have now characterized an embryo-specific element from the CpG island sequence upstream of Aprt that can protect itself from de novo methylation in transgenic mice as well as reduce methylation of flanking sequences. We placed this element on a removable cassette adjacent to a human HBB (encoding β-globin) reporter and generated a transgene whose methylation pattern can be switched in vivo. Analysis of globin transcription in this system showed that methylation in cis inhibits gene expression in a variety of tissues, indicating that DNA modification may serve as a global genomic repressor.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)203-206
Number of pages4
JournalNature Genetics
Volume22
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 1999

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank E. Rand and T. Jakubowicz for help in preparing the manuscript and figures, and F.A. Asimakopoulos for help in the bisulfite analysis. This work was supported by grants from the NIH (H.C.), Council for Tobacco Research (H.C.), Israel Cancer Research fund (H.C.,Z.S.) and the Israel Ministry of Science (H.C.,Z.S.).

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