Journal
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Volume 25, Issue 8, Pages 1602-1608Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msn110
Keywords
DNA methylation; promoter; expression; genome evolution; vertebrates
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Human promoters divide into 2 classes, the low CpG (LCG) and the high CpG (HCG), based on their CpG dinucleotide content. The LCG class of promoters is hypermethylated and is associated with tissue-specific genes, whereas the HCG class is hypomethylated and associated with broadly expressed genes. By analyzing several chordate genomes separated for hundreds of millions of years, here we show that the divide between low CpG and high CpG promoters is conserved in several distantly related vertebrate taxa (including human, chicken, frog, lizard, and fish) but not in close invertebrate outgroups (sea squirts). Furthermore, LCG and HCG promoters are distinctively associated with tissue-specific and broadly expressed genes in these distantly related vertebrate taxa. Our results indicate that the function of DNA methylation on gene expression is conserved across these vertebrate taxa and suggest that the 2 classes of promoters have evolved early in vertebrate evolution, as a consequence of the advent of global DNA methylation.
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