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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2021.04.21.425900

Unmethylated Regions Encompass The Functional Space Within The Maize Genome

Ricci, W. A.
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Abstract

Delineating the functional space within genomes has been a long-standing goal shared among geneticists, molecular biologists, and genome scientists. The genome of Zea mays (maize) has served as a model for locating functional elements within the gene-distal intergenic space. A recent development has been the discovery and use of accessible chromatin as a proxy for functional regulatory elements. However, the idea has recently arisen that DNA methylation data could supplement the use of accessible chromatin data for homing in on regulatory regions. Here, I test the robustness of using DNA methylation as a proxy for functional space. I find that CHG methylation can be non-arbitrarily partitioned into hypo-methylated and hyper-methylated regions. Hypo-methylated CHG regions are stable across development and contain nearly all accessible chromatin. Note: changes that will be made in version 2: expand introduction; expand discussion; add additional analyses; expand methods; link to github scripts.

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Ricci, W. A.. 2021-04-22. Unmethylated Regions Encompass The Functional Space Within The Maize Genome. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.21.425900

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