Thursday, October 20, 2016

BISTRO - Shriya Sethuraman

4:00 PM

2036 Palmer Commons

BISTRO is restricted to U-M Bioinformatics Graduate Program students and faculty.

"Control of DNA methylation by nucleosome positioning"

Abstract

RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) is a process known to influence gene expression and transposon silencing by establishing repressive chromatin modifications. These repressive marks include de novo DNA methylation and histone modifications. Recent studies have shown that RdDM includes active positioning of nucleosomes on silenced loci. The main goal of this study is to determine if nucleosome positioning determines the pattern of de novo DNA methylation. Genome-wide nucleosome positions were identified using MNase-seq and DNA methylation distribution was determined using Whole Genome Bisulfite Sequencing (WGBS). The data indicates that positions of nucleosomes strongly correlate with the pattern of DNA methylation. Data from mutants in subunits of ATP-dependent chromatin remodelers will be further analyzed to determine the causal relationship between nucleosomes and DNA methylation.