Abstract
DNA methylation is a reversible covalent chemical modification of DNA intended to regulate chromatin structure and gene expression in a cell- and tissue-specific manner and in response to the environment. Cytosine methylation is predominantly occurring in plants, and cytosine nucleotides in plants can be methylated at symmetrical (CpG and CpHpG) and nonsymmetrical sites. Although there exists a number of various methods for the detection of cytosine methylation, most of them are either laborious or expensive or both. Here, we describe a quick inexpensive method for the analysis of global genome methylation using a cytosine-extension assay. The assay can be used for the analysis of the total level of CpG, CpHpG, and CpHpH methylation in a given sample of plant DNA.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Law JA, Jacobsen SE (2010) Establishing, maintaining and modifying DNA methylation patterns in plants and animals. Nat Rev Genet 11(3):204–220
Saze H, Tsugane K, Kanno T, Nishimura T (2012) DNA methylation in plants: relationship to small RNAs and histone modifications, and functions in transposon inactivation. Plant Cell Physiol 53(5):766–784
Shibuya K, Fukushima S, Takatsuji H (2009) RNA-directed DNA methylation induces transcriptional activation in plants. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106(5):1660–1665
Bilichak A, Ilnystkyy Y, Hollunder J, Kovalchuk I (2012) The progeny of Arabidopsis thaliana plants exposed to salt exhibit changes in DNA methylation, histone modifications and gene expression. PLoS One 7(1):e30515
Boyko A, Blevins T, Yao Y, Golubov A, Bilichak A, Ilnytskyy Y, Hollunder J, Meins F Jr, Kovalchuk I (2010) Transgenerational adaptation of Arabidopsis to stress requires DNA methylation and the function of Dicer-like proteins. PLoS One 5(3):e9514
Cuozzo C, Porcellini A, Angrisano T, Morano A, Lee B, Di Pardo A, Messina S, Iuliano R, Fusco A, Santillo MR, Muller MT, Chiariotti L, Gottesman ME, Avvedimento EV (2007) DNA damage, homology-directed repair, and DNA methylation. PLoS Genet 3(7):e110
Schar P, Fritsch O (2011) DNA repair and the control of DNA methylation. Prog Drug Res 67:51–68
Kato M, Miura A, Bender J, Jacobsen SE, Kakutani T (2003) Role of CG and non-CG methylation in immobilization of transposons in Arabidopsis. Curr Biol 13(5):421–426
Bassing CH, Swat W, Alt FW (2002) The mechanism and regulation of chromosomal V(D)J recombination. Cell 109(Suppl):S45–S55
Bender J (1998) Cytosine methylation of repeated sequences in eukaryotes: the role of DNA pairing. Trends Biochem Sci 23(7):252–256
Lan J, Hua S, He X, Zhang Y (2010) DNA methyltransferases and methyl-binding proteins of mammals. Acta Biochim Biophys Sin Shanghai 42(4):243–252
Zhu JK (2009) Active DNA demethylation mediated by DNA glycosylases. Annu Rev Genet 43:143–166
Lippman Z, Gendrel AV, Black M, Vaughn MW, Dedhia N, McCombie WR, Lavine K, Mittal V, May B, Kasschau KD, Carrington JC, Doerge RW, Colot V, Martienssen R (2004) Role of transposable elements in heterochromatin and epigenetic control. Nature 430(6998):471–476
Vaughn MW, Tanurdzic M, Lippman Z, Jiang H, Carrasquillo R, Rabinowicz PD, Dedhia N, McCombie WR, Agier N, Bulski A, Colot V, Doerge RW, Martienssen RA (2007) Epigenetic natural variation in Arabidopsis thaliana. PLoS Biol 5(7):e174
Wang X, Elling AA, Li X, Li N, Peng Z, He G, Sun H, Qi Y, Liu XS, Deng XW (2009) Genome-wide and organ-specific landscapes of epigenetic modifications and their relationships to mRNA and small RNA transcriptomes in maize. Plant Cell 21(4):1053–1069
Zilberman D, Gehring M, Tran RK, Ballinger T, Henikoff S (2007) Genome-wide analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana DNA methylation uncovers an interdependence between methylation and transcription. Nat Genet 39(1):61–69
Cokus SJ, Feng S, Zhang X, Chen Z, Merriman B, Haudenschild CD, Pradhan S, Nelson SF, Pellegrini M, Jacobsen SE (2008) Shotgun bisulphite sequencing of the Arabidopsis genome reveals DNA methylation patterning. Nature 452(7184):215–219
Lister R, O’Malley RC, Tonti-Filippini J, Gregory BD, Berry CC, Millar AH, Ecker JR (2008) Highly integrated single-base resolution maps of the epigenome in Arabidopsis. Cell 133(3):523–536
Gehring M, Bubb KL, Henikoff S (2009) Extensive demethylation of repetitive elements during seed development underlies gene imprinting. Science 324(5933):1447–1451
Zemach A, Kim MY, Silva P, Rodrigues JA, Dotson B, Brooks MD, Zilberman D (2010) Local DNA hypomethylation activates genes in rice endosperm. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107(43):18729–18734
Dowen RH, Pelizzola M, Schmitz RJ, Lister R, Dowen JM, Nery JR, Dixon JE, Ecker JR (2012) Widespread dynamic DNA methylation in response to biotic stress. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 109(32):E2183–E2191
Pogribny I, Yi P, James SJ (1999) A sensitive new method for rapid detection of abnormal methylation patterns in global DNA and within CpG islands. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 262(3):624–628
McClelland M, Nelson M, Raschke E (1994) Effect of site-specific modification on restriction endonucleases and DNA modification methyltransferases. Nucleic Acids Res 22(17):3640–3659
Fujiwara H, Ito M (2002) Nonisotopic cytosine extension assay: a highly sensitive method to evaluate CpG island methylation in the whole genome. Anal Biochem 307(2):386–389
Basnakian AG, James SJ (1996) Quantification of 3′OH DNA breaks by random oligonucleotide-primed synthesis (ROPS) assay. DNA Cell Biol 15(3):255–262
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Bilichak, A., Kovalchuk, I. (2017). Analysis of Global Genome Methylation Using the Cytosine-Extension Assay. In: Kovalchuk, I. (eds) Plant Epigenetics. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1456. Humana Press, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7708-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7708-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-7706-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7708-3
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols