Abstract
We investigated the CpG methylation status of the sequence CCGG in the rice genome by using methylation-sensitive AFLP and subsequent Southern analyses with the isolated AFLP fragments as probes. CpGs located in single- or low-copy-sequence regions could be grouped into two classes on the basis of their methylation status: methylation status at the class 1 CpG sites was conserved among genetically diverse rice cultivars, whereas cultivar-specific differential methylation was frequently detected among the cultivars at the class 2 CpG sites. The frequency of occurrence of methylation polymorphism between a pair of cultivars was not related to the genetic distance between the two. Through mapping, five class 2 CpG sites were localized on different chromosomes and were not clustered together in the genome. Segregation analysis of the cultivar-specific methylations with their target sites indicated that the differential methylation was stably inherited in a Mendelian fashion over 6 generations, although alterations in the methylation status at the class 2 CpG sites were observed with a low frequency.
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Ashikawa, I. Surveying CpG methylation at 5′-CCGG in the genomes of rice cultivars. Plant Mol Biol 45, 31–39 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006457321781
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006457321781