Arabidopsis cmt3 chromomethylase mutations block non-CG methylation and silencing of an endogenous gene
Open Access
- 15 July 2001
- journal article
- Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Genes & Development
- Vol. 15 (14) , 1753-1758
- https://doi.org/10.1101/gad.905701
Abstract
Plants maintain cytosine methylation at CG and non-CG residues to control gene expression and genome stability. In a screen forArabidopsis mutants that alter methylation and silencing of a densely methylated endogenous reporter gene, we recovered 11 loss-of-function alleles in the CMT3 chromomethylase gene. Thecmt3 mutants displayed enhanced expression and reduced methylation of the reporter, particularly at non-CG cytosines. CNG methylation was also reduced at repetitive centromeric sequences. Thus,CMT3 is a key determinant for non-CG methylation. The lack ofCMT homologs in animal genomes could account for the observation that in contrast to plants, animals maintain primarily CG methylation.Keywords
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