Background Genomic imprinting is a heritable and developmentally essential phenomenon by which gene expression occurs in an allele-specific manner1. While the imprinted alleles are primarily silenced by DNA methylation, it remains largely unknown how methylation is targeted to imprinting control region (ICR), also called differentially methylated region (DMR), and maintained. Here we show that ...

Background: MTHFR promoter hypermethylation in testicular biopsies of patients with non-obstructive azoospermia: the role of epigenetics in male infertility. Materials and Methods: DNA from peripheral blood (PB) samples of 50 patients with NOA and 50 fertile men (controls) as well as DNA from testicular biopsies of 32 patients with NOA and five patients with obstructive azoospemia, but normal s...

background: in acute myeloblastic leukemia, a large number of tumor suppressor genes are silenced through dna methylation such as cdkn2b & p73. wnt inhibitory factor 1 (wif1) and dickkopf-3 (dkk-1) are negative regulators of wnt signaling pathway. in the present study, we evaluated the methylation status of wif1 and dkk-1 genes in acute myeloblastic leukemia patients. patients and methods: bloo...

background and objective: the dbc2 (deleted in breast cancer 2) or rhobtb2 (located on 8p21) is a tumor suppressor gene associated with tumorigenesis. mutational studies of dbc2 at its promoter region in breast cancer revealed an important role for epigenetic changes contributing to its low expression. epigenetic changes through hypermethylation of the promoter can cause the inactivation of dbc...

A protocol for the copper-catalyzed N-methylation of sulfoximines with di-tert-butyl peroxide (DTBP) was developed. This protocol has good functional group tolerance leading to N-methylated sulfoximines in moderate to good yields. Besides, N-ethylation of sulfoximines was achieved in the presence of bis(1,1-dimethylpropyl)peroxide as the ethylating agent under a standard procedure.

Aberrant methylation of CpG islands in promoter regions of tumor cells is one of the major mechanisms for silencing of tumor suppressor genes. We determined the frequency of aberrant promoter methylation of the p16, adenomatous polyposis coli (APC), H-cadherin (CDH13), glutathione S-transferase P1 (GSTP1), O6-methylguanine-DNA-methyltransferase (MGMT), retinoic acid receptor beta-2 (RAR beta), ...

Cell-free extracts of Neurospora crassa mycelium catalyze the methylation of l-histidine to form hercynine (histidine betaine). The partially methylated compounds, alpha-N-methyl-l-histidine and alpha-N,N-dimethyl-l-histidine, are also methylated by the same enzyme preparation to form hercynine. All three methylation reactions are stimulated by the addition of S-adenosylmethionine.

Phosphatidylethanolamine N-methylation was studied in cardiac sarcolemma 8 weeks after the induction of chronic experimental diabetes in rats by a streptozotocin injection (65 mg/kg, iv). Incorporation of radiolabeled methyl groups from S-adenosyl-L-methionine into intramembranal phosphatidylethanolamine, assayed under optimal conditions, confirmed the existence of three catalytic sites involve...

T-cadherin functions as a suppressor gene, which is frequently inactivated by aberrant promoter methylation in several human cancers, but its status oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) has been scarcely studied. Thus this study aimed at exploring the clinical significance and prognostic value of sera patients with OSCC. Methylation-specific PCR (MSP) bisulfate sequencing (BSP) was performed to ...