Isogenic mice exhibit sexually-dimorphic DNA methylation patterns across multiple tissues.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Cytosine methylation is a stable epigenetic modification of DNA that plays an important role in both normal physiology and disease. Most diseases exhibit some degree of sexual dimorphism, but the extent to which epigenetic states are influenced by sex is understudied and poorly understood. To address this deficit we studied DNA methylation patterns across multiple reduced representation bisulphite sequencing datasets (from liver, heart, brain, muscle and spleen) derived from isogenic male and female mice.

Results

DNA methylation patterns varied significantly from tissue to tissue, as expected, but they also varied between the sexes, with thousands of sexually dimorphic loci identified. The loci affected were largely autonomous to each tissue, even within tissues d

SUBMITTER: McCormick H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5729250 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature