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The impact of 55−́CG‐3′ methylation on the activity of different eukaryotic promoters: A comparative study
Author(s) -
Muiznieks Indrikis,
Doerfler Walter
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/0014-5793(94)00394-7
Subject(s) - promoter , methylation , dna methylation , genetics , biology , chemistry , microbiology and biotechnology , computational biology , gene , gene expression
The inhibiting or inactivating effects of position‐specific promoter methylation in different viral or human cellular promoters Ad2 E2AL, SV40, LTR‐MMTV, HSV‐tk, TNFα) have been compared by in vitro 5′‐CCGG‐3′ methylation by M‐ Hpa II or the M‐ Sss I DNA‐methyltransferase, respectively. In most promoters, 5′‐CG‐3′ methylation reduces activity to a few percent of that of mock‐methylated controls. The number of 5′‐CG‐3′ dinucleotides in a promoter does not strictly correlate with the extent of methylation inhibition. The LTR‐MMTV promoter, which lacks 5′‐CG‐3′ dinucleotides, is not affected by methylation. The late E2A promoter of Ad2 DNA cannot be inactivated by 5′‐CCGG‐3′ methylation when the construct carries the strong cytomegalovirus enhancer devoid of this sequence. In contrast, 5′‐CG‐3′ methylation shuts this promoter off even in the presence of this enhancer.