Abstract
The recent discovery of DNA methylation in the nematode T.spiralis may raise the possibility of using it as a potential model organism for epigenetic studies instead of C. elegans, which is deficient in this important epigenetic modification. In contrast to the free-living nematode C. elegans, T. spiralis is a parasitic worm that possesses a complicated life cycle and undergoes a complex developmental regulation of genes. We emphasize that the differential methylomes in the different life-history stages of T. spiralis can provide insight on how DNA methylation is triggered and regulated. In particular, we have demonstrated that DNA methylation is involved in the regulation of its parasitism-related genes. Further computational analyses indicated that the regulatory machinery for DNA methylation can also be found in the T. spiralis genome. By a logical extension of this point, we speculate that comprehensively addressing the epigenetic machinery of T. spiralis may help to understand epigenetics in invertebrates. Furthermore, considering the implication of epigenetics in metazoan parasitism, using T. spiralis as an epigenetic model organism may further contribute to drug development against metazoan parasites.
Highlights
CURRENT MODEL ORGANISMS IN EPIGENETIC STUDIES Research activities using model organisms have provided critical breakthroughs in understanding fundamental questions in biology
Various model organisms have been applied to date, through which a wealth of knowledge has been acquired from several landmark epigenetic discoveries (David Allis and Danny Reinberg, 2007)
We highlight that the current findings on the DNA methylation of T. spiralis may raise the possibility of using it as a potential model organism in epigenetic studies
Summary
CURRENT MODEL ORGANISMS IN EPIGENETIC STUDIES Research activities using model organisms have provided critical breakthroughs in understanding fundamental questions in biology. Because DNA methylation is not observed in yeast, the presence of DNA methylation in the fungus Neurospora crassa made it a model organism for DNA methylation studies and contributed to the discovery of repeat-induced point mutation (RIP), which is a genome defense mechanism (David Allis and Danny Reinberg, 2007). Trichinella spiralis as potential epigenetic model of nematode life cycle and undergoes complex developmental regulation of its genes (Figure 1) (Mitreva and Jasmer, 2006).
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