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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Mar 25.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Biotechnol. 2010 Oct;28(10):1045–1048. doi: 10.1038/nbt1010-1045

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Layers of genome organization. Genome function and cellular phenotypes are influenced by DNA methylation and the protein-DNA complex known as chromatin. In mammals, DNA methylation occurs on cytosine bases, primarily in the context of CpG dinucleotides. Accessible chromatin that is hypersensitive to DNase I digestion marks promoters and functional elements bound by transcription factors or other regulatory proteins. Histone modifications, associated proteins such as Polycomb repressors and noncoding RNAs constitute an additional layer of chromatin structure that affects genome function in a context-dependent manner.