Effect of Epigenetics on Human Herpesvirus 4 genome

Abstract

DNA Methylation is a process responsible for introducing epigenetic modification in a genome. Epigenetic modification plays important role in regulating many cellular processes including early embryogenesis, gametogenesis and cellular differentiation in the mammals. CG suppression has been reported in vertebrates. Viruses, whose host organisms are vertebrates, have also shown similar under-representation of CGs within their genomes because of their co-evolution with their hosts. We attempted to study genomes of Human Herpesvirus 4 causing infection in humans. Our data and results have shown that in Human Herpesvirus 4, CG dinucleotides are showing underrepresentation while TG and CA are being over-represented because of the corresponding gain from loss of CG. Herpesvirus 4 genome sequences were then subjected to Multiple Sequence Alignment to identify CG dinucleotide’s conserved positions. Mutations of CGs were observed at conserved positions that provide us with strong evidence that CG mutations have been bias for TG/CA as compared to any other dinucleotide sequence so therefore it indicates a strong association with DNA methylation in Human Herpesvirus 4 genome.