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CpG Methylation System Revealed in Western Honey Bee

Oct 30, 2006 environmental alterations, imprinting, news links, research articles

Last week Science published several new reports on Apis mellifera, the honey bee, including a report from Wang et. al on the functional CpG methylation system in this newly sequenced genome. The methylation report has a number of key findings and implications for further research:

  • While the widely used genetics model Drosophila melanogaster shows only limited DNA methylation, the honey bee exhibits a fully functional CpG methylation system, including the identification of the deoxycytosine methyltransferase Dnmt2, as well as an ortholog for de novo methylation (AmDnmt3) and two orthologs for maintenance methylation (AmDnmt1a and AmDnmt1b).
  • Analysis thus far indicates that non-CpG methylation in the honey bee is either extremely rare or non-existent.
  • The authors propose that DNA methylation is widespread in insects, and thus Drosophila may be useful for understanding “unexplored evolutionary aspects of genome regulation.”
  • Since honey bees exhibit the underlying mechanisms that underlie imprinting, they could be used to test the kin-conflict theory.
  • All detected methylation in the honey bee was limited predominantly to coding regions.
  • The overall level of methylation in the honey bee is lower compared to vertebrates.
These findings could be important in providing a new understanding of how DNA methylation has evolved over time. Link

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 11:10 am and is filed under environmental alterations, imprinting, news links, research articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “CpG Methylation System Revealed in Western Honey Bee”

  1. Cells in Focus, n2 « Migrations Says:

    November 5th, 2006 at 5:18 pm

    [...] CpG Methylation System Revealed in Western Honey Bee: [...]


  2. easternblot.net » Tangled Bank - The Future, Present, and Past Says:

    November 8th, 2006 at 3:48 pm

    [...] At least our days are not as repetitive as the honey bee’s. They don’t even get weekends off. But they do have a fully functional CpG methylation system, as reviewed by Trevor of Epigenetics News. [...]