Publisher's Synopsis
This book comprises papers given at a Royal Society Discussion Meeting held in February 1989. The papers in this volume review and assess the significance of the advances that have been made, by using a variety of experimentatal systems, concerning the possible importance of DNA methylation in controlling the activity of genes during development.;Contributions range from the cloning and sequencing of the major mammalian methyl transferase to the control of chromosome activity, which underlies the process of genomic imprinting.;Papers review the use of DNA methylases in "in vitro" methylation, the methylation of maize transposable elements (and the correlation of this with activity), and DNA methylation patterns, and DNA methylation and specific protein-DNA interactions. Three articles discuss CpG islands that show tissue-specific demethylation of genes in animal cells. There are also articles on the probability that DNA methylation and late replication aid cell memory, relating DNA methylation during mouse embryotic development to X-chromosomes by DNA methylation and DNA methylation and epigenetic inheritance.
