Journal
BMC GENOMICS
Volume 18, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
BIOMED CENTRAL LTD
DOI: 10.1186/s12864-017-4350-x
Keywords
Epigenetics; DNA methylation; Sexual dimorphism; Gender; Tissue-specific methylation; RRBS
Funding
- Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant [DP120100825]
- Australian Postgraduate Award
- Australian Research Council DECRA [DE120100723]
- Australian Research Council Future Fellowship [FT120100097]
- Australian Research Council [FT120100097, DE120100723] Funding Source: Australian Research Council
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Background: Cytosine methylation is a stable epigenetic modification of DNA that plays an important role in both normal physiology and disease. Most diseases exhibit some degree of sexual dimorphism, but the extent to which epigenetic states are influenced by sex is understudied and poorly understood. To address this deficit we studied DNA methylation patterns across multiple reduced representation bisulphite sequencing datasets (from liver, heart, brain, muscle and spleen) derived from isogenic male and female mice. Results: DNA methylation patterns varied significantly from tissue to tissue, as expected, but they also varied between the sexes, with thousands of sexually dimorphic loci identified. The loci affected were largely autonomous to each tissue, even within tissues derived from the same germ layer. At most loci, differences between genders were driven by females exhibiting hypermethylation relative to males; a proportion of these differences were independent of the presence of testosterone in males. Loci harbouring gender differences were clustered in ontologies related to tissue function. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that gender is underwritten in the epigenome in a tissue-specific and potentially sex hormone-independent manner. Gender-specific epigenetic states are likely to have important implications for understanding sexually dimorphic phenotypes in health and disease.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available