Abstracts (poster) - Wissenschaft Online

Sascha Tierling, Yingying Zhang, Christian Rohde, Nina Pälmke, Julia Arand, Diana
Santacruz, Matthias Platzer, Richard Reinhardt, Albert Jeltsch, Jörn Walter
NAME21: The National Methylome Project of Human
Chromosome 21
DNA methylation is essential for embryonic development, immunological memory and
adult brain function. Despite of the complex biological importance of DNA methylation
for the development and pathophysiology of human, genome wide maps of DNAmethylation
distribution are still lacking. NAME 21 will contribute to fill this gap by
providing such a comprehensive map for chromosome 21. We analyzed all gene
promoters in two primary cell types (peripheral blood and primary fibroblasts) and two in
vitro cell lines (HEK293 and HEPG2) by bisulfite sequencing and found most amplicons to
be consistently unmethylated. Adressing inter-species methylation variation we found 10
out of 28 amplicons to be different (25-50%) between human and chimpanzee.
Focussing on structural promoter features, we found nucleosome positioning not to be
correlated to DNA methylation. However, Z-DNA-like structures in CpG islands might
represent an important structural marker for the prediction of DNA methylation. To
identify intergenic regulatory elements that are potentially involved in transcription and
genome integrity we started to expand our work into evolutionary conserved CpG-rich
sections in transcript-poor and transition (from transcript-rich to transcript-poor) regions
and show first preliminary results. NAME21 is linked to the Human Epigenome
Consortium (HEP) and to the NoE “The EPIGENOME”.
Literature
Bock, C., Paulsen, M., Tierling, S. et al. (2006) PLoS Genet. 2, e26.
Jeltsch, A., Walter, J., Reinhardt, R. & Platzer, M. (2006) Cancer Res. 66, 7378.
Goyal, R., Reinhardt, R. & Jeltsch, A. (2006) Nucl. Acids Res. 34, 1182-8.
Bock, C., Reither, S., Mikeska, T. et al. (2005) Bioinformatics 21, 4067-8.
contact:
Dr. Sascha Tierling
Universität des Saarlandes
Genetik/Epigenetik
s.tierling@mx.uni-saarland.de
Campus Geb. A24
66123 Saarbrücken (Deutschland)
additional information
Address Authors 4,5,6,10 same as first author
Address Authors 2,3,9:
School of Engineering and Science, Jacobs University Bremen, Campus Ring 1, D-28759 Bremen
Address Author 7:
Fritz-Lipmann-Institut, Beutenbergstrasse 11, 07745 Jena
Address Author 8:
Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Genetik, Ihnestrasse 63-73, 14195 Berlin