DNA Methylation Analysis Of Overlapping Genes In Arabidopsis Thaliana

Epigenetic research is at the forefront of plant biology and molecular genetics. Studies on higher plants underscore the significant role played by epigenetics in both plant development and stress response. Relatively recent advances in analytical methodology have allowed for a significant expansion of what is known about genomewide mapping of DNA methylation. We analysed the overlapping genes in Arabidopsis thaliana and the DNA methylation information of the overlapping genes to explore the principles exist in gene regulation of DNA methylation.The results of overlapping genes analysis demonstrated, there is no bias of overlapping gene distribution along the chromosome, however, the length of overlapping genes is longer than non-overlapping genes. Many overlapping gene pairs include many important developmental genes, as well as genes known to be involved in gene imprinting. We can get conclusion that, many genes overlap each other are regulated by anti-sense transcripts and these mechanisms are more or less related to sRNA.Analysis of DNA methylation in overlapping genes indicated that, DNA methylation mostly occurs at the promoter regions and it is the same as the observation of non-overlapping genes. Nevertheless, less DNA methylation can be found in the coding regions of overlapping genes, indicating that, there are some mechanism unkown infect overlapping gene DNA methylation.