PubMed · 8292001
Dynamics of DNA methylation during development.
Abstract
DNA methylation plays a role in the repression of gene expression in animal cells. In the mouse preimplantation embryo, most genes are unmethylated but a wave of de novo methylation prior to gastrulation generates a bimodal pattern characterized by unmethylated CpG island-containing housekeeping genes and fully modified tissue-specific genes. Demethylation of individual genes then takes place during cell type specific differentiation, and this demodification may be a required step in the process of transcriptional activation. DNA modification is also involved in the maintenance of gene repression on the inactive X chromosome in female somatic cells and the marking of parental alleles at genomically imprinted gene loci.
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M Brandeis, M Ariel, H Cedar. 1993. Dynamics of DNA methylation during development.. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.950151103
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