TY - JOUR AU - Sigurdsson, Martin I. AU - Smith, Albert V. AU - Bjornsson, Hans T. AU - Jonsson, Jon J. PY - 2012 DA - 2012/04/24 TI - The distribution of a germline methylation marker suggests a regional mechanism of LINE-1 silencing by the piRNA-PIWI system JO - BMC Genetics SP - 31 VL - 13 IS - 1 AB - A defense system against transposon activity in the human germline based on PIWI proteins and piRNA has recently been discovered. It represses the activity of LINE-1 elements via DNA methylation by a largely unknown mechanism. Based on the dispersed distribution of clusters of piRNA genes in a strand-specific manner on all human chromosomes, we hypothesized that this system might work preferentially on local and proximal sequences. We tested this hypothesis with a methylation-associated SNP (mSNP) marker which is based on the density of C-T transitions in CpG dinucleotides as a surrogate marker for germline methylation. SN - 1471-2156 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2156-13-31 DO - 10.1186/1471-2156-13-31 ID - Sigurdsson2012 ER -