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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2008 Feb 10.
Published in final edited form as: J Nutr. 2006 Jun;136(6):1522–1527. doi: 10.1093/jn/136.6.1522

FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1

Schematic representation of Dnmts and MBDs involved in epigenetic silencing of genes. Three functional Dnmts highly conserved in mammals (A). Simplified mechanism of methylation mediated silencing (B). Nucleosomes wrapped around transcriptionally active promoters are relaxed where CpG base pairs are unmethylated and core nucleosomal histones are acetylated. Dnmt3a or Dnmt3b (de novo methyl transferase) initiate methylation of CpG base pairs, which are maintained postreplication by Dnmt1. Methyl CpG binding proteins then bind to the methylated CpGs and recruit different corepressors, resulting in nucleosomal condensation and epigenetic silencing. Open and filled lollipops denote methylated and unmethylated CpG, respectively. Schematic diagram of MBD family members (C). MBD and TRD stand for methyl CpG binding domain and transcriptional repressor domain, respectively.