Methylation of cytosine at carbon 5 of the pyrimidine ring (5-meC) is a reversible epigenetic mark for transcriptional gene silencing, and plays important roles in controlling cellular differentiation and proliferation. Understanding how the methylation status of the genome is regulated requires the biochemical definition of the enzymatic processes that demethylate DNA. Work carried out by our group and by other laboratories on the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana has led to the identification of 5-meC DNA glycosylases of the ROS1/DME family, and has established that plant cells are able to use base excision repair to erase DNA methylation. Plants deficient in this DNA demethylation pathway display a range of phenotypic alterations during development. Our objective is to characterize this DNA demethylation mechanism, identifying additional proteins needed to complete the process, and assign them functional roles.
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