Khosla, Sanjeev and Sharma, Garima and Yaseen, Imtiyaz (2016) Learning epigenetic regulation from mycobacteria. Microbial Cell, 3 (2). pp. 92-94. ISSN 2311-2638

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Abstract

In a eukaryotic cell, the transcriptional fate of a gene is determined by the profile of the epigenetic modifications it is associated with and the conformation it adopts within the chromatin. Therefore, the function that a cell performs is dictated by the sum total of the chromatin organization and the associated epigenetic modifications of each individual gene in the genome (epigenome). As the function of a cell during development and differentiation is determined by its microenvironment, any factor that can alter this microenvironment should be able to alter the epigenome of a cell. In the study published in Nature Communications (Yaseen 2015 Nature Communications 6:8922 doi: 10.1038/ncomms9922), we show that pathogenic Mycobacterium tuberculosis has evolved strategies to exploit this pliability of the host epigenome for its own survival. We describe the identification of a methyltransferase from M. tuberculosis that functions to modulate the host epigenome by methylating a novel, non-canonical arginine, H3R42 in histone H3. In another study, we showed that the mycobacterial protein Rv2966c methylates cytosines present in non-CpG context within host genomic DNA upon infection. Proteins with ability to directly methylate host histones H3 at a novel lysine residue (H3K14) has also been identified from Legionella pnemophilia (RomA). All these studies indicate the use of non-canonical epigenetic mechanisms by pathogenic bacteria to hijack the host transcriptional machinery.

Item Type:	Article
Depositing User:	Users 2 not found.
Date Deposited:	28 Feb 2018 12:55
Last Modified:	28 Feb 2018 12:55
URI:	http://cdfd.sciencecentral.in/id/eprint/825

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