TY - JOUR TI - In vivo targeting of de novo DNA methylation by histone modifications in yeast and mouse AU - Morselli, Marco AU - Pastor, William A AU - Montanini, Barbara AU - Nee, Kevin AU - Ferrari, Roberto AU - Fu, Kai AU - Bonora, Giancarlo AU - Rubbi, Liudmilla AU - Clark, Amander T AU - Ottonello, Simone AU - Jacobsen, Steven E AU - Pellegrini, Matteo A2 - Ren, Bing VL - 4 PY - 2015 DA - 2015/04/07 SP - e06205 C1 - eLife 2015;4:e06205 DO - 10.7554/eLife.06205 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06205 AB - Methylation of cytosines (5meC) is a widespread heritable DNA modification. During mammalian development, two global demethylation events are followed by waves of de novo DNA methylation. In vivo mechanisms of DNA methylation establishment are largely uncharacterized. Here, we use Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a system lacking DNA methylation to define the chromatin features influencing the activity of the murine DNMT3B. Our data demonstrate that DNMT3B and H3K4 methylation are mutually exclusive and that DNMT3B is co-localized with H3K36 methylated regions. In support of this observation, DNA methylation analysis in yeast strains without Set1 and Set2 shows an increase of relative 5meC levels at the transcription start site and a decrease in the gene-body, respectively. We extend our observation to the murine male germline, where H3K4me3 is strongly anti-correlated while H3K36me3 correlates with accelerated DNA methylation. These results show the importance of H3K36 methylation for gene-body DNA methylation in vivo. KW - DNMT3 KW - histone KW - H3K36me3 KW - H3K4me3 KW - DNA methylation JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -