DNA Methylation in hypoxia in Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Abstract

Tuberculosis is one of the most lethal contagious diseases caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), in many cases, the infected did not show any symptoms, because the bacilli entered the dormant stage in granulomas. The dormant stage of MTB is also associated with higher resistance to drugs and the immune system. Among multiple epigenetic regulations critical to MTB stress responses, DNA methylation is necessary for the survival of MTB in hypoxic conditions, which is a common stress event during granuloma formation. This review gathers previous findings and demonstrates a meta-analysis by collecting hypoxia gene expression data from several articles and perform association analysis between those genes and methylation site profiles across whole genomes of representative strains pf lineage 2 and 4. While more data is required for more conclusive support, our results suggest that methylation sites in the possible promoter regions may induce differential gene regulation in hypoxia.Comment: 20 pages, 9 table