Recently, Gu Xiaofeng group in Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Yan Guangrong group in the Guangzhou medical university, Wang Kai group in the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and Bo Xiaochen group in the Academy of Military Sciences have made an important breakthrough in DNA methylation. This study revealed the distribution map and regulatory mechanism of DNA adenine methylation in human genome and discussed the potential role and clinical significance of adenine methylation in tumorigenesis. Related article was published in the “Molecular Cell”.

With the advancement in life science’s research, epigenetic modification has changed people's conception about the genome. The growing evidences show that epigenetics plays a key role in regulating gene expression, growth and development, and environmental adaptation. DNA methylation is an important aspect in the epigenetic research. In 2015, three reports on genome-wide distribution and function of DNA adenine methylation in Dorsophila, Nematodes and Chlamydomonas were published in Cell, which revealed its importance and function in eukaryotes. However, the mechanism and application of adenine methylation is less studied.  Very recently we have revealed the genome-wide distribution and regulatory functions of adenine methylation in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.

Based on the third-generation sequencing system, adenine methylation was identified in the human genome and its conserved motif was found. Furthermore, the modification was found to be related to gene transcriptional activation. In addition, methylated enzymes and demethylated enzymes regulating adenine methylation modification were determined, and their regulatory mechanisms in the occurrence of human tumor diseases were discussed.

Biotechnology research institute has established the epigenetic technology system including mass spectrometry of epigenetic modification, epigenetic biochemical analysis and the high-throughput data analysis of epigenetic，to ensure the project successfully implemented.