Methylation Is Highly Diverse

A basic-science study found that methylation differed across tissues and that most regions, including neurons and glia, had nonstandard CG sites, where guanine was replaced by adenine or thymine.

Until now, epigenetic studies usually examined methylation only at cytosine-guanine (CG) sites, including recent psychopathology studies of alcoholism (NEJM JW Psychiatry Jul 2015 and Am J Psychiatry 2015; 172:543). To learn about methylation at different sites and in different tissue types, researchers used epigenetic, expression, and sequencing methods in 18 tissue samples obtained postmortem from four individuals.

Differential methylation across tissues occurred in 15% of the more than 26 million sites tested, and 60% of the differentially methylated regions were novel. Only 19% of differentially methylated regions occurred at standard CG islands. Non-CG methylation, in which guanine was replaced by adenine or thymine, occurred in almost …

Reviewing Author

Barbara Geller, MD

Disclosures

Nothing to disclose

Barbara Geller, MD

Disclosures

Nothing to disclose

Methylation Is Highly Diverse

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Reviewing Author