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Novel features of telomere biology revealed by the absence of telomeric DNA methylation

Cytosine methylation regulates the length and stability of telomeres, which can affect a wide variety of biological features, including cell differentiation, development, or illness. Although it is well established that subtelomeric regions are methylated, the presence of methylated cytosines at tel...

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Autores principales: Vega-Vaquero, Alejandro, Bonora, Giancarlo, Morselli, Marco, Vaquero-Sedas, María I., Rubbi, Liudmilla, Pellegrini, Matteo, Vega-Palas, Miguel A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4971770/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27405804
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/gr.202465.115
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author Vega-Vaquero, Alejandro
Bonora, Giancarlo
Morselli, Marco
Vaquero-Sedas, María I.
Rubbi, Liudmilla
Pellegrini, Matteo
Vega-Palas, Miguel A.
author_facet Vega-Vaquero, Alejandro
Bonora, Giancarlo
Morselli, Marco
Vaquero-Sedas, María I.
Rubbi, Liudmilla
Pellegrini, Matteo
Vega-Palas, Miguel A.
author_sort Vega-Vaquero, Alejandro
collection PubMed
description Cytosine methylation regulates the length and stability of telomeres, which can affect a wide variety of biological features, including cell differentiation, development, or illness. Although it is well established that subtelomeric regions are methylated, the presence of methylated cytosines at telomeres has remained controversial. Here, we have analyzed multiple bisulfite sequencing studies to address the methylation status of Arabidopsis thaliana telomeres. We found that the levels of estimated telomeric DNA methylation varied among studies. Interestingly, we estimated higher levels of telomeric DNA methylation in studies that produced C-rich telomeric strands with lower efficiency. However, these high methylation estimates arose due to experimental limitations of the bisulfite technique. We found a similar phenomenon for mitochondrial DNA: The levels of mitochondrial DNA methylation detected were higher in experiments with lower mitochondrial read production efficiencies. Based on experiments with high telomeric C-rich strand production efficiencies, we concluded that Arabidopsis telomeres are not methylated, which was confirmed by methylation-dependent restriction enzyme analyses. Thus, our studies indicate that telomeres are refractory to de novo DNA methylation by the RNA-directed DNA methylation machinery. This result, together with previously reported data, reveals that subtelomeric DNA methylation controls the homeostasis of telomere length.
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spelling pubmed-49717702017-02-01 Novel features of telomere biology revealed by the absence of telomeric DNA methylation Vega-Vaquero, Alejandro Bonora, Giancarlo Morselli, Marco Vaquero-Sedas, María I. Rubbi, Liudmilla Pellegrini, Matteo Vega-Palas, Miguel A. Genome Res Research Cytosine methylation regulates the length and stability of telomeres, which can affect a wide variety of biological features, including cell differentiation, development, or illness. Although it is well established that subtelomeric regions are methylated, the presence of methylated cytosines at telomeres has remained controversial. Here, we have analyzed multiple bisulfite sequencing studies to address the methylation status of Arabidopsis thaliana telomeres. We found that the levels of estimated telomeric DNA methylation varied among studies. Interestingly, we estimated higher levels of telomeric DNA methylation in studies that produced C-rich telomeric strands with lower efficiency. However, these high methylation estimates arose due to experimental limitations of the bisulfite technique. We found a similar phenomenon for mitochondrial DNA: The levels of mitochondrial DNA methylation detected were higher in experiments with lower mitochondrial read production efficiencies. Based on experiments with high telomeric C-rich strand production efficiencies, we concluded that Arabidopsis telomeres are not methylated, which was confirmed by methylation-dependent restriction enzyme analyses. Thus, our studies indicate that telomeres are refractory to de novo DNA methylation by the RNA-directed DNA methylation machinery. This result, together with previously reported data, reveals that subtelomeric DNA methylation controls the homeostasis of telomere length. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 2016-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4971770/ /pubmed/27405804 http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/gr.202465.115 Text en © 2016 Vega-Vaquero et al.; Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first six months after the full-issue publication date (see http://genome.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After six months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
spellingShingle Research
Vega-Vaquero, Alejandro
Bonora, Giancarlo
Morselli, Marco
Vaquero-Sedas, María I.
Rubbi, Liudmilla
Pellegrini, Matteo
Vega-Palas, Miguel A.
Novel features of telomere biology revealed by the absence of telomeric DNA methylation
title Novel features of telomere biology revealed by the absence of telomeric DNA methylation
title_full Novel features of telomere biology revealed by the absence of telomeric DNA methylation
title_fullStr Novel features of telomere biology revealed by the absence of telomeric DNA methylation
title_full_unstemmed Novel features of telomere biology revealed by the absence of telomeric DNA methylation
title_short Novel features of telomere biology revealed by the absence of telomeric DNA methylation
title_sort novel features of telomere biology revealed by the absence of telomeric dna methylation
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4971770/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27405804
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/gr.202465.115
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