Hypermethylation in coding exon - (Mar/06/2006 )

Dear Nick and PCRman,

My gene does not show any methylation in the promoter region (there are CpG islands), interestingly, there is hypermethylation in one following coding exon which is also a CpG island. I am wondering if this will make any sense in the transcriptional silencing of the gene? Or is it common of the existence of hypermethylaiton in coding exon? Many thanks for your help.

Hy

Hy,

it may have something to do with gene regulation, it maybe regulating an antisense transcript from which that in turn degrades the mRNA transcript.

What we are finding though is that exonic CpG's are invariably methylated and intronic ones are not. more on this later......

Nick

Yes, exons can be methylated for example the p16 gene. There is no consensus regarding its regulatory impact.