Cell identity is determined by chromatin structure and the profiles of gene expression, which are dependent on chromatin accessibility and DNA methylation of regions critical for gene expres-sions, such as enhancers and promoters. These epigenetic modifications are required for mamma-lian development and are essential for the establishment and the maintenance of the cellular iden-tity. DNA methylation was once thought to be a permanent repressive epigenetic mark, but sys-tematic analysis in various genomic contexts reveals a more dynamic regulation than previously thought. In fact, both active DNA methylation and demethylation occur during cell fate commit-ment and terminal differentiation. To link methylation signatures of specific genes to their ex-pression profiles, we have determined the methyl-CpG configurations of the promoters of five genes switched on and off during murine postnatal brain differentiation by bisulfite-targeted se-quencing. We report here the structure of significant, dynamic and stable methyl-CpG profiles as-sociated with silencing or activation of expression of genes during brain postnatal differentiation. Strikingly, these methylation cores mark different mouse brain areas and cell types derived from the same areas during postnatal differentiation.
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Improda et al. (2023) studied this question.