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Nanopores suggest a negligible influence of CpG methylation on nucleosome packaging and stability.

ABSTRACT: Nucleosomes are the fundamental repeating units of chromatin, and dynamic regulation of their positioning along DNA governs gene accessibility in eukaryotes. Although epigenetic factors have been shown to influence nucleosome structure and dynamics, the impact of DNA methylation on nucleosome packaging remains controversial. Further, all measurements to date have been carried out under zero-force conditions. In this paper, we present the first automated force measurements that probe the impact of CpG DNA methylation on nucleosome stability. In solid-state nanopore force spectroscopy, a nucleosomal DNA tail is captured into a pore and pulled on with a time-varying electrophoretic force until unraveling is detected. This is automatically repeated for hundreds of nucleosomes, yielding statistics of nucleosome lifetime vs electrophoretic force. The force geometry, which is similar to displacement forces exerted by DNA polymerases and helicases, reveals that nucleosome stability is sensitive to DNA sequence yet insensitive to CpG methylation. Our label-free method provides high-throughput data that favorably compares with other force spectroscopy experiments and is suitable for studying a variety of DNA-protein complexes.

SUBMITTER: Langecker M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4296928 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Nanopores suggest a negligible influence of CpG methylation on nucleosome packaging and stability.

Langecker Martin M Ivankin Andrey A Carson Spencer S Kinney Shannon R M SR Simmel Friedrich C FC Wanunu Meni M

Nano letters 20141212 1

Nucleosomes are the fundamental repeating units of chromatin, and dynamic regulation of their positioning along DNA governs gene accessibility in eukaryotes. Although epigenetic factors have been shown to influence nucleosome structure and dynamics, the impact of DNA methylation on nucleosome packaging remains controversial. Further, all measurements to date have been carried out under zero-force conditions. In this paper, we present the first automated force measurements that probe the impact o ...[more]

PMID: 25495735

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Project description:Methylation of DNA at CpG dinucleotides represents one of the most important epigenetic mechanisms involved in the control of gene expression in vertebrate cells. In this report, we conducted high-throughput nucleosome reconstitution experiments on 572 KB of human DNA and 668 KB of mouse DNA that was unmethylated or methylated in order to investigate the effects of this epigenetic modification on the positioning and stability of nucleosomes. The DNA loci from both species contained the genes that encode the serum albumin family, the MYC protein, and the tumor suppressor p53. The results demonstrated that a small subset of nucleosomes positioned by nucleotide sequence was sensitive to methylation where the modification increased the affinity of these sequences for the histone octamer. The features that distinguished these nucleosomes from the bulk of the methylation-insensitive nucleosomes were an increase in the frequency of CpG dinucleotides and a unique rotational orientation of CpGs such that their minor grooves tended to face toward the histones in the nucleosome rather than away. We propose that these features serve to enhance the affinity of methylated DNA for the histone octamer and that this effect could be involved in gene regulatory mechanisms such as silencing. These methylation-sensitive nucleosomes were preferentially associated with exons as compared to introns while unmethylated CpG islands near transcription start sites became enriched in nucleosomes upon methylation. The results of this study suggest that the effects of DNA methylation on nucleosome stability in vitro can recapitulate what has been observed in the cell and provide a direct link between DNA methylation and the structure and function of chromatin. For the human data, there were 3 unmethylated nucleosome replicates, 2 methylated nucleosome replicates, an unmethylated MNase control, and an unmethylated sonicated control. For the mouse data, there were 2 unmethylated nucleosome replicates, 2 methylated nucleosome replicates, an unmethylated MNase control, a methylated MNase control, and an unmethylated sonicated control.

Dataset Information

Nanopores suggest a negligible influence of CpG methylation on nucleosome packaging and stability.

Publications

Nanopores suggest a negligible influence of CpG methylation on nucleosome packaging and stability.

Similar Datasets

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