Project description:We recently reported that a significant subpopulation of adult mouse brain cellular nuclei (NeuN-High) have highly decondensed chromatin characteristic of multipotent cells types (Yu et al., DNEU, 2015). Herein we show that NeuN-High nuclei also have significantly higher levels of 5´-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), a rate limiting intermediate in the turnover of modified cytosine. TET-assisted bisulfite sequencing demonstrated that 5hmC levels in NeuN-High nuclei spiked rapidly from 20% to nearly 40% of CG dinucleotides at the start of gene regions for various classes of the most highly transcribed neuron-specific genes, but were variably distributed among different functional gene categories and in well-defined gene regions. NeuN-Low neuronal and non-nueronal neuronal nuclei had significantly lower levels of 5hmC for all classes of expressed genes. In summary, these data support the view that an elevated turnover rate for chromatin modifications may potentiate the cellular memory of the most active subclasses of neurons.
Project description:We perform single nucleus RNAsequencing using a smartseq2 protocol on mouse, chicken, and human cerbellar nuclei. Nuclei were released and FACS sorted for NeuN
Project description:Genome wide DNA methylation profiling of brain and liver from human and chimpanzee. The Illumina HumanMethylation27 DNA Beadchip v1.2 was used to obtain DNA methylation profiles across approximately 27,000 CpGs for each sample. Samples included liver and NeuN-positive/NeuN-negative/unsorted brain in three individuals from each of two species (human and chimpanzee).