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Adenine N6-methylation in diverse fungi

Nature Genetics volume 49, pages 823–824 (2017)Cite this article

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A DNA modification—methylation of cytosines and adenines—has important roles in diverse processes such as regulation of gene expression and genome stability, yet until recently adenine methylation had been considered to be only a hallmark of prokaryotes. A new study identifies abundant adenine methylation of transcriptionally active genes in early-diverging fungi that, together with recent other work, emphasizes the importance of adenine methylation in eukaryotes.

In many eukaryotes, heritable and reversible chemical DNA modifications significantly increase the information content of DNA. DNA methylation of cytosine, 5-methylcytosine (5mC), is important for regulation of gene expression and for genome stability through its suppression of transposable elements1,2,3. In prokaryotes, N6-methyladenine (6mA) is the most frequent DNA modification4 and is involved in diverse processes such as genome defense against foreign DNA, DNA repair and replication, and the regulation of gene expression5. In contrast, the occurrence and function of 6mA in eukaryotes has been largely unexplored5. Recent studies in animals6,7, protists8 and green algae9 have begun to uncover genome-wide patterns of 6mA modification in eukaryotes. In this issue of Nature Genetics, Igor Grigoriev and colleagues10 took advantage of recent technological developments and analyzed 16 fungal genomes to detect abundant 6mA that is associated with transcriptionally active genes in early-diverging fungi.

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Figure 1: Adenine N6-methylation in phylogenetically diverse eukaryotes.

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  1. Michael F. Seidl is in the Laboratory of Phytopathology, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands.,

    Michael F Seidl

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  1. Michael F Seidl
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Correspondence to Michael F Seidl.

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Seidl, M. Adenine N6-methylation in diverse fungi. Nat Genet 49, 823–824 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3873

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