Background: Tet methylcytosine dioxygenase converts 5-mC to 5-hmC in DNA. Results: Ascorbate significantly and specifically enhances Tet-mediated generation of 5-hmC. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that ascorbate enhances 5-hmC generation, most likely by acting as a co-factor for Tet methylcytosine dioxygenase to generate 5-hmC. Significance: The availability of ascorbate could have significant consequences for health and diseases by modulating the epigenetic control of genome activity.

PURPOSE To analyze the relationship between ARMS2 and HTRA1 in the association with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in an independent case-control dataset, and to investigate the subcellular localization of the ARMS2 protein in an in vitro system. METHOD Two SNPs in ARMS2 and HTRA1 were genotyped in 685 cases and 269 controls by Taqman Assay. Allelic association was tested by a χ2 test. A likelihood ratio test (LRT) of full vs. reduced models was utilized to analyze the interaction between ARMS2 and smoking and HTRA1 and smoking, after adjusting for CFH and age. Immunofluorescence and immunoblot were applied to localize ARMS2 in retinal epithelial ARPE-19 cells and COS7 cell transfected by ARMS2 constructs. RESULT Both significantly associated SNP rs10490924 and rs11200638 (P<0.0001) are in strong linkage disequilibrium (LD) (D′=0.97, r2=0.93) that generates virtually identical association test and odds ratios. In separate logistic regression models the interaction effect for both smoking with ARMS2 and with HTRA1 was not statistically significant. Immunofluorescence and immunoblot show that both endogenous and exogenous ARMS2 are mainly distributed in the cytosol, not the mitochondria. Comparing to wild type, ARMS2 A69S is more likely to be associated with cytoskeleton in COS7 cells. CONCLUSIONS The significant associations in ARMS2 and HTRA1 are with polymorphisms in strong LD that confer virtually identical risks, preventing differentiation at the statistical level. We found that ARMS2 was mainly distributed in the cytosol, not in mitochondrial outer membrane as previously reported, suggesting that ARMS2 may not confer risk to AMD through the mitochondrial pathway.

Controversy remains as to which gene at the chromosome 10q26 locus confers risk for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and statistical genetic analysis is confounded by the strong linkage disequilibrium (LD) across the region. Functional analysis of related genetic variations could solve this puzzle. Recently Fritsche et al. reported that AMD is associated with unstable ARMS2 transcripts possibly caused by a complex insertion/deletion (indel; consisting of a 443 bp deletion and an adjacent 54 bp insertion) in its 3′UTR (untranslated region). To validate this indel, we sequenced our samples. We found that this indel is even more complex and is composed of two side-by-side indels separated by 17 bp: (1) 9 bp deletion with 10bp insertion; (2) 417 bp deletion with 27 bp insertion. The indel is significantly associated with the risk of AMD, but is also in strong LD with the non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs10490924 (A69S). We also found that ARMS2 is expressed not only in placenta and retina but also in multiple human tissues. Using quantitative PCR, we found no correlation between the indel and ARMS2 mRNA level in human retina and blood samples. The lack of functional effects of the 3′UTR indel, the amino acid substitution of rs10490924 (A69S) and strong LD between them suggest that A69S, not the indel is the variant that confers risk of AMD. To our knowledge, it is the first time it's been shown that ARMS2 is widely expressed in human tissues. Conclusively, the indel at 3′UTR of ARMS2 actually contains two side-by-side indels. The indels are associated with risk of AMD, but not correlated with ARMS2 mRNA level.