Divergent neuronal DNA methylation patterns across human cortical development reveal critical periods and a unique role of CpH methylation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

DNA methylation (DNAm) is a critical regulator of both development and cellular identity and shows unique patterns in neurons. To better characterize maturational changes in DNAm patterns in these cells, we profile the DNAm landscape at single-base resolution across the first two decades of human neocortical development in NeuN+ neurons using whole-genome bisulfite sequencing and compare them to non-neurons (primarily glia) and prenatal homogenate cortex.

Results

We show that DNAm changes more dramatically during the first 5 years of postnatal life than during the entire remaining period. We further refine global patterns of increasingly divergent neuronal CpG and CpH methylation (mCpG and mCpH) into six developmental trajectories and find that in contrast to geno

SUBMITTER: Price AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6761727 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature