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Updated: Apr 20, 2026

Immunostaining for DNA Modifications: Computational Analysis of Confocal Images
Published on: September 7, 2017
Topoisomerase II regulates the maintenance of DNA methylation
Lin-Yu Lu1, Henry Kuang2, Gautam Korakavi2
1From the Women's Hospital, School of Medicine, and the Institute of Translational Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310006, China and lulinyu@zju.edu.cn.
Abstract:
The maintenance of DNA methylation in nascent DNA is a critical event for numerous biological processes. Following DNA replication, DNMT1 is the key enzyme that strictly copies the methylation pattern from the parental strand to the nascent DNA. However, the mechanism underlying this highly specific event is not thoroughly understood. In this study, we identified topoisomerase IIα (TopoIIα) as a novel regulator of the maintenance DNA methylation. UHRF1, a protein important for global DNA methylation, interacts with TopoIIα and regulates its localization to hemimethylated DNA. TopoIIα decatenates the hemimethylated DNA following replication, which might facilitate the methylation of the nascent strand by DNMT1. Inhibiting this activity impairs DNA methylation at multiple genomic loci. We have uncovered a novel mechanism during the maintenance of DNA methylation.
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