Nature Genetics
34, 75 - 79 (2003)
Published online: 7 April 2003; | doi:10.1038/ng1143
Trimethylated lysine 9 of histone H3 is a mark for DNA methylation in Neurospora crassaHisashi Tamaru1, Xing Zhang2, Debra McMillen1, Prim B. Singh3, Jun-ichi Nakayama4, 6, Shiv I. Grewal4, C. David Allis5, Xiaodong Cheng2
& Eric U. Selker11
Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA. 2
Department of Biochemistry, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA. 3
Nuclear Reprogramming Laboratory, Division of Gene Expression and Development, The Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Midlothian, EH25 9PS, UK. 4
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, USA. 5
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Virginia Health Sciences Center, Charlottesville, Virginia 22908, USA. 6
Present address: Laboratory for Chromatin Dynamics, Center for Developmental Biology, RIKEN, Kobe 650-0047, Japan.
Correspondence should be addressed to Eric U. Selker selker@molbio.uoregon.eduBesides serving to package nuclear DNA, histones carry information in the form of a diverse array of post-translational modifications. Methylation of histones H3 and H4 has been implicated in long-term epigenetic 'memory'1. Dimethylation or trimethylation of Lys4 of histone H3 (H3 Lys4) has been found in expressible euchromatin of yeasts and mammals2,
3,
4. In contrast, methylation of Lys9 of histone H3 (H3 Lys9) has been implicated in establishing and maintaining the largely quiescent heterochromatin of mammals, yeasts, Drosophila melanogaster and plants5,
6,
7,
8,
9. We have previously shown that a DNA methylation mutant of Neurospora crassa, dim-5 (defective in methylation), has a nonsense mutation in the SET domain of an H3-specific histone methyltransferase and that substitutions of H3 Lys9 cause gross hypomethylation of DNA10. Similarly, the KRYPTONITE histone methyltransferase is required for full DNA methylation in Arabidopsis thaliana
11. We used biochemical, genetic and immunological methods to investigate the specific mark for DNA methylation in N. crassa. Here we show that trimethylated H3 Lys9, but not dimethylated H3 Lys9, marks chromatin regions for cytosine methylation and that DIM-5 specifically creates this mark.
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