PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Marco Catoni
AU  - Jayne Griffiths
AU  - Claude Becker
AU  - Nicolae Radu Zabet
AU  - Carlos Bayon
AU  - Mélanie Dapp
AU  - Michal Lieberman-Lazarovich
AU  - Detlef Weigel
AU  - Jerzy Paszkowski
TI  - DNA sequence properties that predict susceptibility to epiallelic switching
AID  - 10.1101/057794
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 057794
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/08/057794.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/08/057794.full
AB  - Transgenerationally heritable epialleles are defined by the stable propagation of alternative transcriptional states through mitotic and meiotic cell cycles. Given that the propagation of DNA methylation at CpG sites, mediated in Arabidopsis by MET1, plays a central role in epigenetic inheritance, we examined genome-wide DNA methylation in partial and complete loss-of-function met1 mutants. We interpreted the data in relation to transgenerational epiallelic stability and provide evidence that DNA sequence features such as density of CpGs and genomic repetitiveness can be used to predict susceptibility to epiallelic switching. The importance of these rules was confirmed by analyses of common epialleles in natural Arabidopsis accessions and verified in rice.