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Fig. 2 | Epigenetics & Chromatin

Fig. 2

From: DNA methylation and DNA methyltransferases

Fig. 2

Dynamics of demethylation and de novo methylation in the maternal (a) and paternal (b) genomes during mammalian development. The standard depictions of developmental changes in genomic methylation patterns often assume a monolithic genome; in fact, different sequence compartments display marked differences in timing of methylation and demethylation. CpG-rich (CpG island) promoters are unmethylated at all stages, except for the small number of CpG islands associated with imprinting control regions and CpG islands on the inactive X chromosome in somatic cells of females. Young, CpG-rich transposons largely escape both waves of demethylation. Most of the dynamic methylation and demethylation that occurs in primordial germ cells (PGCs) and the early embryo affects sequences that are evolving at the neutral rate and whose methylation status is without known biological effect. The methylation status of these sequences, which represent the bulk of the genome and are composed of satellite DNA, old and inactive transposons, introns, and unannotated sequences evolving at the neutral rate, is shown by broken lines

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