Adaption of COBRA Method for The Investigation of Nutrition-Based DNA Methylation Mechanism in Escherichia coli

Abstract

Epigenetics are changes that occur in the DNA sequence due to environmental conditions. In last few decades epigenetics has been one of the most important advances in biology and related fields. It is very important in that it offers a new approach to all relevant disciplines, especially biology, to explain how DNA sequencing in an epigenetic organism is affected by environmental conditions and phenotype changes that may result from this interaction. Although there are many environmental factors affecting organisms, starvation is one of the most important factors. In our study, epigenetic changes in Escherichia coli due to carbon starvation in the sprE (rssB) gene region were investigated by COBRA (Combined Bisulfite Restriction Analysis) technique, which is one of the quantitative methylation analyzes. As a result of the current results, it has been shown that the methylation status of the 16th CpG islet located in the sprE gene region does not play a role in the regulation of fasting metabolism in E. coli due to the restriction of the carbon level.