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Molecular and Cellular Biology, December 2001, p. 7913-7922, Vol. 21, No. 23
Division of Basic Sciences, Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington
98109,1 and Department of Radiation
Oncology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle,
Washington 981952
Received 31 May 2001/Returned for modification 3 August
2001/Accepted 22 August 2001
The majority of 5-methylcytosine in mammalian DNA resides in
endogenous transposable elements and is associated with the
transcriptional silencing of these parasitic elements. Methylation also
plays an important role in the silencing of exogenous retroviruses. One
of the difficulties inherent in the study of proviral silencing is that
the sites in which proviruses randomly integrate influence the
probability of de novo methylation and expression. In order to compare
methylated and unmethylated proviruses at the same genomic site, we
used a recombinase-based targeting approach to introduce an in vitro
methylated or unmethylated Moloney murine leukemia-based provirus in
MEL cells. The methylated and unmethylated states are maintained in
vivo, with the exception of the initially methylated proviral enhancer,
which becomes demethylated in vivo. Although the enhancer is
unmethylated and remodeled, the methylated provirus is
transcriptionally silent. To further analyze the repressed state,
histone acetylation status was determined by chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) analyses, which revealed that localized histone H3 but not histone H4 hyperacetylation is inversely correlated with proviral methylation density. Since members of the methyl-CpG binding domain (MBD) family of proteins recruit histone deacetylase activity, these proteins may play a role in proviral repression. Interestingly, only MBD3 and MeCP2 are expressed in MEL cells. ChIPs
with antibodies specific for these proteins revealed that only MeCP2
associates with the provirus in a methylation-dependent manner. Taken
together, our results suggest that MeCP2 recruitment to a methylated
provirus is sufficient for transcriptional silencing, despite the
presence of a remodeled enhancer.
0270-7306/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/MCB.21.23.7913-7922.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Methylation-Mediated Proviral Silencing Is
Associated with MeCP2 Recruitment and Localized Histone H3
Deacetylation
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Research Center, 1100 Fairview Ave. N, A3-025, Seattle, WA
98109. Phone: (206) 667-4497. Fax: (206) 667-5894. E-mail:
markg{at}fhcrc.org.
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