Jump to main content
US EPA
United States Environmental Protection Agency
Search
Search
Main menu
Environmental Topics
Laws & Regulations
About EPA
Health & Environmental Research Online (HERO)
Contact Us
Print
Feedback
Export to File
Search:
This record has one attached file:
Add More Files
Attach File(s):
Display Name for File*:
Save
Citation
Tags
HERO ID
504216
Reference Type
Journal Article
Title
Epigenetics: differential DNA methylation in mammalian somatic tissues
Author(s)
Nagase, H; Ghosh, S
Year
2008
Is Peer Reviewed?
1
Journal
FEBS Journal
ISSN:
1742-464X
EISSN:
1742-4658
Volume
275
Issue
8
Page Numbers
1617-1623
Language
English
DOI
10.1111/j.1742-4658.2008.06330.x
Abstract
Epigenetics refers to heritable phenotypic alterations in the absence of DNA sequence changes, and DNA methylation is one of the extensively studied epigenetic alterations. DNA methylation is an evolutionally conserved mechanism to regulate gene expression in mammals. Because DNA methyation is preserved during DNA replication it can be inherited. Thus, DNA methylation could be a major mechanism by which to produce semi-stable changes in gene expression in somatic tissues. Although it remains controversial whether germ-line DNA methylation in mammalian genomes is stably heritable, frequent tissue-specific and disease-specific de novo methylation events are observed during somatic cell development/differentiation. In this minireview, we discuss the use of restriction landmark genomic scanning, together with in silico analysis, to identify differentially methylated regions in the mammalian genome. We then present a rough overview of quantitative DNA methylation patterns at 4600 NotI sites and more than 150 differentially methylated regions in several C57BL/6J mouse tissues. Comparative analysis between mice and humans suggests that some, but not all, tissue-specific differentially methylated regions are conserved. A deeper understanding of cell-type-specific differences in DNA methylation might lead to a better illustration of the mechanisms behind tissue-specific differentiation in mammals.
Keywords
cancer; CpG islands; differentially methylated region; differentiation; DNA methylation; epigenetics; mouse; restriction landmark genomic; scanning (RLGS); tissue-specific DMR; Vi-RLGS; cytosine methylation; gene-expression; prostate-cancer; regions tdms; human genome; cells; hypermethylation; patterns; promoter; rlgs
Home
Learn about HERO
Using HERO
Search HERO
Projects in HERO
Risk Assessment
Transparency & Integrity