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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Neurosci. 2010 Nov;13(11):1319–1323. doi: 10.1038/nn.2666

Figure 1.

Figure 1

DNA methylation. a, Inside a cell nucleus, DNA is wrapped tightly around an octamer of highly basic histone proteins to form chromatin. Epigenetic modifications can occur at histone tails, or directly at DNA via DNA methylation. b, DNA methylation occurs at cytosine bases when a methyl group is added at the 5' position on the pyrimidine ring by a DNA methyltransferase (DNMT). c, Two types of DNMTs initiate DNA methylation. De novo DNMTs methylate previously non-methylated cytosines, whereas maintenance DNMTs methylate hemi-methylated DNA at the complementary strand.

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