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      Whole-genome analysis of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine and 5-methylcytosine at base resolution in the human brain

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          Abstract

          Background

          5-methylcytosine (mC) can be oxidized by the tet methylcytosine dioxygenase (Tet) family of enzymes to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (hmC), which is an intermediate of mC demethylation and may also be a stable epigenetic modification that influences chromatin structure. hmC is particularly abundant in mammalian brains but its function is currently unknown. A high-resolution hydroxymethylome map is required to fully understand the function of hmC in the human brain.

          Results

          We present genome-wide and single-base resolution maps of hmC and mC in the human brain by combined application of Tet-assisted bisulfite sequencing and bisulfite sequencing. We demonstrate that hmCs increase markedly from the fetal to the adult stage, and in the adult brain, 13% of all CpGs are highly hydroxymethylated with strong enrichment at genic regions and distal regulatory elements. Notably, hmC peaks are identified at the 5′splicing sites at the exon-intron boundary, suggesting a mechanistic link between hmC and splicing. We report a surprising transcription-correlated hmC bias toward the sense strand and an mC bias toward the antisense strand of gene bodies. Furthermore, hmC is negatively correlated with H3K27me3-marked and H3K9me3-marked repressive genomic regions, and is more enriched at poised enhancers than active enhancers.

          Conclusions

          We provide single-base resolution hmC and mC maps in the human brain and our data imply novel roles of hmC in regulating splicing and gene expression. Hydroxymethylation is the main modification status for a large portion of CpGs situated at poised enhancers and actively transcribed regions, suggesting its roles in epigenetic tuning at these regions.

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          Most cited references22

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          The evolution of gene expression levels in mammalian organs.

          Changes in gene expression are thought to underlie many of the phenotypic differences between species. However, large-scale analyses of gene expression evolution were until recently prevented by technological limitations. Here we report the sequencing of polyadenylated RNA from six organs across ten species that represent all major mammalian lineages (placentals, marsupials and monotremes) and birds (the evolutionary outgroup), with the goal of understanding the dynamics of mammalian transcriptome evolution. We show that the rate of gene expression evolution varies among organs, lineages and chromosomes, owing to differences in selective pressures: transcriptome change was slow in nervous tissues and rapid in testes, slower in rodents than in apes and monotremes, and rapid for the X chromosome right after its formation. Although gene expression evolution in mammals was strongly shaped by purifying selection, we identify numerous potentially selectively driven expression switches, which occurred at different rates across lineages and tissues and which probably contributed to the specific organ biology of various mammals.
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            Hydroxylation of 5-methylcytosine by TET1 promotes active DNA demethylation in the adult brain.

            Cytosine methylation is the major covalent modification of mammalian genomic DNA and plays important roles in transcriptional regulation. The molecular mechanism underlying the enzymatic removal of this epigenetic mark, however, remains elusive. Here, we show that 5-methylcytosine (5mC) hydroxylase TET1, by converting 5mCs to 5-hydroxymethylcytosines (5hmCs), promotes DNA demethylation in mammalian cells through a process that requires the base excision repair pathway. Though expression of the 12 known human DNA glycosylases individually did not enhance removal of 5hmCs in mammalian cells, demethylation of both exogenously introduced and endogenous 5hmCs is promoted by the AID (activation-induced deaminase)/APOBEC (apolipoprotein B mRNA-editing enzyme complex) family of cytidine deaminases. Furthermore, Tet1 and Apobec1 are involved in neuronal activity-induced, region-specific, active DNA demethylation and subsequent gene expression in the dentate gyrus of the adult mouse brain in vivo. Our study suggests a TET1-induced oxidation-deamination mechanism for active DNA demethylation in mammals. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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              Base-resolution analysis of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine in the mammalian genome.

              The study of 5-hydroxylmethylcytosines (5hmC) has been hampered by the lack of a method to map it at single-base resolution on a genome-wide scale. Affinity purification-based methods cannot precisely locate 5hmC nor accurately determine its relative abundance at each modified site. We here present a genome-wide approach, Tet-assisted bisulfite sequencing (TAB-Seq), that when combined with traditional bisulfite sequencing can be used for mapping 5hmC at base resolution and quantifying the relative abundance of 5hmC as well as 5mC. Application of this method to embryonic stem cells not only confirms widespread distribution of 5hmC in the mammalian genome but also reveals sequence bias and strand asymmetry at 5hmC sites. We observe high levels of 5hmC and reciprocally low levels of 5mC near but not on transcription factor-binding sites. Additionally, the relative abundance of 5hmC varies significantly among distinct functional sequence elements, suggesting different mechanisms for 5hmC deposition and maintenance. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Genome Biol
                Genome Biol
                Genome Biology
                BioMed Central
                1465-6906
                1465-6914
                2014
                4 March 2014
                : 15
                : 3
                : R49
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Biodynamic Optical Imaging Center & Center for Reproductive Medicine, College of Life Sciences, Third Hospital, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China
                [2 ]Key Laboratory of Assisted Reproduction, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100191, P. R. China
                [3 ]Department of Neurosurgery, Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing 100191, China
                [4 ]Department of Chemistry & Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
                [5 ]Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Cell Proliferation and Differentiation, Beijing 100871, P. R. China
                [6 ]Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China
                Article
                gb-2014-15-3-r49
                10.1186/gb-2014-15-3-r49
                4053808
                24594098
                2d881c41-58fd-4369-ad2f-66d3ae7a17cc
                Copyright © 2014 Wen et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 28 November 2013
                : 4 March 2014
                Categories
                Research

                Genetics
                Genetics

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