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Updated: May 17, 2026

Gastric Mucosa Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction Analysis for Detecting Helicobacter pylori and Antibiotic Resistance
Published on: March 7, 2025
Epigenetic implication of gene-adjacent retroelements in Helicobacter pylori-infected adults
Mun-Gan Rhyu1, Jung-Hwan Oh, Seung-Jin Hong
1Department of Microbiology, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, 505 Banpo-dong Socho-gu, Seoul 137-701, Korea.
Abstract:
A chronic inflammatory condition of gastric mucosa can facilitate the influx of new stem cells into the stomach. Epigenetic codes, such as DNA methylation, may be responsible for the stable maintenance of epigenetic phenotypes established in the new stomach-adapted stem cells. A number of hypotheses have been made for the role of CpG-island methylation, which is common in the Helicobacter pylori-infected stomach. However, they could not explain the plausible role of CpG-island methylation in the re-establishment of epigenetic phenotypes. These islands are highly repetitive sequences densely methylated throughout the human genome, the so-called parasitic retroelements, which expand a number of cDNA copies with reverse transcriptase. The densely methylated retroelements adjacent to the host genes can form the transitional-CpG sites around gene-control regions that are barely methylated. This review focuses on the putative role of transitional CpG methylation in the adaptive differentiation of new stem cells in the H. pylori-infected stomach.
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