Why DNA is methylated

When located in a gene promoter, dna methylation typically acts to repress gene transcription.Dna methylation regulates gene expression by recruiting proteins involved in gene repression or by inhibiting the binding of transcription factor(s) to dna.Dna hypermethylation only occurs in promoter regions at cpg islands.Some researchers have even used the amount of methylation in certain genes as a biological clock, as its occurrence in individual genes is proportional to age.These methyl groups project into the major groove of dna and inhibit transcription.

It turns out that restriction enzymes are one half of naturally occurring restriction modification systems that prokaryotes use to protect themselves from foreign dna.In addition to this role, however, studies in escherichia coli, salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium (referred to as s.Dna methylation is a process by which methyl groups are added to cytosine or adenine.Dna methylation is a biological process by which methyl groups are added to the dna molecule.Or, to break it down even further, methylation is the process your body uses to add methyl groups to the dna molecule, thereby changing the activity of a dna segment without changing the sequence.

A number of mechanisms exist to control gene expression in eukaryotes, but dna methylation is a commonly used.This allows one to focus on a specific and small genetic region of interest.