Crystal structures of B-DNA dodecamer containing the epigenetic modifications 5-hydroxymethylcytosine or 5-methylcytosine.
Renciuk, D., Blacque, O., Vorlickova, M., Spingler, B.(2013) Nucleic Acids Res 41: 9891-9900
- PubMed: 23963698 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkt738
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
4GJU, 4GLC, 4GLG, 4GLH, 4HLI - PubMed Abstract: 
5-Hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) was recently identified as a relatively frequent base in eukaryotic genomes. Its physiological function is still unclear, but it is supposed to serve as an intermediate in DNA de novo demethylation. Using X-ray diffraction, we solved five structures of four variants of the d(CGCGAATTCGCG) dodecamer, containing either 5-hmC or 5-methylcytosine (5-mC) at position 3 or at position 9. The observed resolutions were between 1.42 and 1.99 Å. Cytosine modification in all cases influences neither the whole B-DNA double helix structure nor the modified base pair geometry. The additional hydroxyl group of 5-hmC with rotational freedom along the C5-C5A bond is preferentially oriented in the 3' direction. A comparison of thermodynamic properties of the dodecamers shows no effect of 5-mC modification and a sequence-dependent only slight destabilizing effect of 5-hmC modification. Also taking into account the results of a previous functional study [Münzel et al. (2011) (Improved synthesis and mutagenicity of oligonucleotides containing 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, 5-formylcytosine and 5-carboxylcytosine. Chem. Eur. J., 17, 13782-13788)], we conclude that the 5 position of cytosine is an ideal place to encode epigenetic information. Like this, neither the helical structure nor the thermodynamics are changed, and polymerases cannot distinguish 5-hmC and 5-mC from unmodified cytosine, all these effects are making the former ones non-mutagenic.
Organizational Affiliation: 
Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland, Institute of Biophysics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Kralovopolska 135, 61265 Brno, Czech Republic and CEITEC-Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University, Kamenice 5, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic.