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DNA Methylation in Honey Bees and the Unresolved Questions in Insect Methylomics

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DNA Methyltransferases - Role and Function

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((AEMB,volume 1389))

Abstract

DNA methylation has been found in most invertebrate lineages except for Diptera, Placozoa and the majority of Nematoda. In contrast to the mammalian methylation toolkit that consists of one DNMT1 and several DNMT3s, some of which are catalytically inactive accessory isoforms, invertebrates have different combinations of these proteins with some using just one DNMT1 and the others, like the honey bee, two DNMT1s one DNMT3. Although the insect DNMTs show sequence similarity to mammalian DNMTs, their in vitro and in vivo properties are not well investigated. In contrast to heavily methylated mammalian genomes, invertebrate genomes are only sparsely methylated in a ‘mosaic’ fashion with the majority of methylated CpG dinucleotides found across gene bodies that are frequently associated with active transcription. Additional work also highlights that obligatory methylated epialleles influence transcriptional changes in a context-specific manner. We argue that some of the lineage-specific properties of DNA methylation are the key to understanding the role of this genomic modification in insects. Future mechanistic work is needed to explain the relationship between insect DNMTs, genetic variation, differential DNA methylation, other epigenetic modifications, and the transcriptome in order to fully understand the role of DNA methylation in converting genomic sequences into phenotypes.

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Abbreviations

ALK:

anaplastic lymphoma kinase

CpG:

cytosine and guanidine dinucleotide separated by one phosphate in DNA

DBP:

DNA-binding protein

DNMT:

DNA methyltransferase

LAM:

lysosomal alpha-mannosidase

MeCP:

methyl-CpG-binding factor

PTM:

post-translational modification

RdDM:

RNA-directed DNA methylation system

TET:

Ten-eleven translocation enzyme

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  1. Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Laura Wedd, Robert Kucharski & Ryszard Maleszka

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  1. Laura Wedd
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Correspondence to Ryszard Maleszka .

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  1. Department of Biochemistry, Institute of Biochemistry and Technical Biochemistry, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Albert Jeltsch

  2. School of Biosciences, Division of Biomedicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Renata Z. Jurkowska

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Wedd, L., Kucharski, R., Maleszka, R. (2022). DNA Methylation in Honey Bees and the Unresolved Questions in Insect Methylomics. In: Jeltsch, A., Jurkowska, R.Z. (eds) DNA Methyltransferases - Role and Function. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 1389. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11454-0_7

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