CpG islands are >200-bp stretches of DNA that have a significantly higher concentration of CpG dinucleotides than the bulk of the genome. Whereas 70%–80% of all CpG dinucleotides in the human genome are methylated, CpG islands by and large remain unmethylated (Cross and Bird 1995), with the exception of those associated with imprinted and X-linked genes (Razin and Cedar 1994). In this issue of ...

BACKGROUND CpG islands have been demonstrated to influence local chromatin structures and simplify the regulation of gene activity. However, the accurate and rapid determination of CpG islands for whole DNA sequences remains experimentally and computationally challenging. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A novel procedure is proposed to detect CpG islands by combining clustering technology with...

Epigenetic silencing associated with aberrant methylation of promoter region CpG islands is one mechanism leading to loss of tumor suppressor function in human cancer. Profiling of CpG island methylation indicates that some genes are more frequently methylated than others, and that each tumor type is associated with a unique set of methylated genes. However, little is known about why certain ge...

6.1.1 Preface: CpG islands It is known that due to biochemical considerations that CpG, the pair of nocleotides C and G, appearing successively, in this order, along one DNA starnd, is relatively rare in DNA sequences, excluding particular sub-sequences, which are several hundreds of nucleotides long, where the couple CpG is more frequent. These sub-sequences, called CpG islands, are known to a...

The CACNA1C gene, encoding a subunit of the L-type voltage-gated calcium channel is one of the best-supported susceptibility genes for bipolar disorder (BD). Genome-wide association studies have identified a cluster of non-coding single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in intron 3 to be highly associated with BD and schizophrenia. The mechanism by which these SNPs confer risk of BD appears to be...

We used the 4C-Seq technique to characterize the genome-wide patterns of spatial contacts of several CpG islands located on chromosome 14 in cultured chicken lymphoid and erythroid cells. We observed a clear tendency for the spatial clustering of CpG islands present on the same and different chromosomes, regardless of the presence or absence of promoters within these CpG islands. Accordingly, w...

CpG island methylation plays an important role in epigenetic gene control during mammalian development and is frequently altered in disease situations such as cancer. The majority of CpG islands is normally unmethylated, but a sizeable fraction is prone to become methylated in various cell types and pathological situations. The goal of this study is to show that a computational epigenetics appr...

A new fissiparous asterinid seastar Aquilonastra chantalae sp. nov. is described from Europa Island, one of the Scattered Islands (Les îles Éparses) in the Mozambique Channel. It is compared with the fissiparous asterinid Aquilonastra conandae O'Loughlin & Rowe from the Mascarene Islands. A table of distinguishing diagnostic characters is provided. The asterinid Aquilonastra richmondi O'Loughli...

Remittances ad orders for subiptiona and single copie, and not of chan of address should be sent to the Circulation Department Claims for miming numbers will not be allowed if received more than 60 days from date of isue. No claims allowed from ubscribers in Central Europe, Asia, or the Pacific Islands other than Hawaii or because of failure to notify the Circulation Department of a change of a...

Chlamydophila psittaci was detected in 10% of 431 fulmars examined from the Faroe Islands. Analysis of ompA showed a sequence almost identical to that of the type strain. The origin of C. psittaci outbreaks in fulmars is discussed. Despite a high level of exposure, the risk for transmission of C. psittaci to humans is low.