Evolution of DNA methylome diversity in eukaryotes

Our lab has participated in the special issue of the Journal of Molecular Biology: “Reading DNA modifications”. We contributed with a review: “Evolution of DNA methylome diversity in eukaryotes”. In this piece, we summarise a decade worth of insights obtained from whole genome bisulfite sequencing studies across eukaryotes. We speculate on the origins and functions of diverse DNA methylation patterns observed in different organisms and propose how such patterns might have evolved. This work expands our knowledge on the function and evolutionary origins of DNA methylation in plants, animals and fungi. The bonus was that our artwork (designed by Scot Nicholls) was selected for the cover of this special issue.

Evolutionary conservation of DNA methylation loss during chordate development. Hourglass represents the developmental morphological divergence across species, where the mid-developmental phylotypic stage shows similar morphologies across distant taxa whereas early and late development are more prone to lineage specific forms.