HOPE report

Number:21-002

Joint research project for comparative methylome study in humans and chimpanzees

Report:Yasuhiro Go

Date:2009/07/29 - 2009/10/02

To answer the question of 'What is the role of DNA methylation for the evolution of human (hominization), I have performed a genome-wide comparative methylation study (comparative methylome) in humans and chimpanzees. Before going into a final experiment which is plan to use a DNA sample from dorsolateral prefrontal cortex both in humans and chimpanzees, I needed to make a proper protocol for doing this study. To do this, EB transformed cell-lines from humans and chimpanzees was used as a preliminary study. After enrichment of promoter regions by using some restriction enzymes, I constructed the library for Genome Analyzer sequencer (Illumina Inc. ) by checking up a detail condition of each experimental step. In addition, I took much time to set a proper protocol for the bisulphite treatment, which is used for conversion from unmethylated cytosine to uracil. Although I did not finish off the study to the end, I accomplished to establish the proper protocol in each step of this study. Hereafter some experienced technicians who are in the Max-Planck institute are now taking over this work and producing the sequence data. Besides the experiment, I joined many internal meetings or external seminars that were held in there to discuss about my own study and some other projects with many primate evolutionary geneticists and made good relationships with those peoples.

MPI

Laboratory

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