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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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IBB 1128 | Posted: October 21, 2008
Soojin Yi, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Biology
Title: "Evolutionary Role of DNA Methylation in Animal Genomes"
DNA methylation is a primary epigenetic mechanism involved in several regulatory and developmental processes. In this talk, I will focus on the molecular evolutionary role of DNA methylation. An important property of DNA methylation is its propensity to increase specific types of point mutations. Using this property, we have developed analytical tools to investigate influence of DNA methylation on genome evolution. We show that (i) DNA methylation causes different genomic regions to follow qualitatively different molecular clocks, (ii) influence regional variability of nucleotide composition, (iii) affected evolution of vertebrate promoters. Finally, (iv) our survey shows that the influence of DNA methylation on genome evolution is widespread in animal taxa. While the model invertebrate species Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans lack DNA methylation, the genome of a social bee Apis mellifera exhibits an unmistakable signature of DNA methylation at sequence and functional level.
To view video: Yi - Breakfast Club Seminar
