The Colorful History of Active DNA Demethylation

Patterns of DNA cytosine methylation are subject to mitotic inheritance in both plants and vertebrates. Plants use 5-methylcytosine glycosylases and the base excision repair pathway to remove excess cytosine methylation. In mammals, active demethylation has been proposed to operate via several very...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCell Vol. 133; no. 7; pp. 1145 - 1148
Main Authors Ooi, Steen K.T., Bestor, Timothy H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Elsevier Inc 27.06.2008
Subjects
Animals
DNA - metabolism
DNA Methylation
DNA Modification Methylases - metabolism
Mammals - genetics
Mammals - metabolism
Plants - genetics
Plants - metabolism
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Summary:Patterns of DNA cytosine methylation are subject to mitotic inheritance in both plants and vertebrates. Plants use 5-methylcytosine glycosylases and the base excision repair pathway to remove excess cytosine methylation. In mammals, active demethylation has been proposed to operate via several very different mechanisms. Two recent reports in Nature now claim that the demethylation process is initiated by the same enzymes that establish the methylation mark, the DNA methyltransferases DNMT3A and DNMT3B ( Kangaspeska et al., 2008; Métivier et al., 2008).
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ISSN:0092-8674
1097-4172
1097-4172
DOI:10.1016/j.cell.2008.06.009