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Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Genes & Development, 14(28), p. 1544-1549, 2014

DOI: 10.1101/gad.244350.114

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Two waves of de novo methylation during mouse germ cell development

Journal article published in 2014 by Antoine Molaro ORCID, Ilaria Falciatori, Emily Hodges ORCID, Alexei A. Aravin, Krista Marran, Shahin Rafii, W. Richard McCombie, W. Richard McCombie, Andrew D. Smith, Gregory J. Hannon
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

During development, mammalian germ cells reprogram their epigenomes via a genome-wide erasure and de novo rewriting of DNA methylation marks. We know little of how methylation patterns are specifically determined. The piRNA pathway is thought to target the bulk of retrotransposon methylation. Here we show that most retrotransposon sequences are modified by default de novo methylation. However, potentially active retrotransposon copies evade this initial wave, likely mimicking features of protein-coding genes. These elements remain transcriptionally active and become targets of piRNA-mediated methylation. Thus, we posit that these two waves play essential roles in resetting germ cell epigenomes at each generation.