Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health Commons^™

Intronic Non-Cg Dna Hydroxymethylation And Alternative Mrna Splicing In Honey Bees, Pablo Cingolani, Xiaoyi Cao, Radhika S. Khetani, Chieh-Chun Chen, Melissa Coon, Alya'a Sammak, Aliccia Bollig-Fischer, Susan Land, Yun Huang, Matthew E. Hudson, Mark D. Garfinkel, Sheng Zhong, Gene E. Robinson, Douglas M. Ruden

Wayne State University Associated BioMed Central Scholarship

Abstract

Background

Previous whole-genome shotgun bisulfite sequencing experiments showed that DNA cytosine methylation in the honey bee (Apis mellifera) is almost exclusively at CG dinucleotides in exons. However, the most commonly used method, bisulfite sequencing, cannot distinguish 5-methylcytosine from 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, an oxidized form of 5-methylcytosine that is catalyzed by the TET family of dioxygenases. Furthermore, some analysis software programs under-represent non-CG DNA methylation and hydryoxymethylation for a variety of reasons. Therefore, we used an unbiased analysis of bisulfite sequencing data combined with molecular and bioinformatics approaches to distinguish 5-methylcytosine from 5-hydroxymethylcytosine. By doing this, we have performed the first whole …