Discovery of bisulfite-mediated cytosine conversion to uracil, the key reaction for DNA methylation analysis--a personal account

Methylation at position 5 of cytosine in DNA is being intensively studied in many areas of biological sciences, as the methylation is intimately associated with the control of gene functions. The principal analytical method for determining the sites of 5-methylcytosine in genome at the sequence level involves bisulfite modification of DNA. The utility of this chemical treatment is based on the property of bisulfite to selectively deaminate cytosine residues. The bisulfite-mediated cytosine deamination was discovered in 1970 by us in the University of Tokyo. At the same time, Shapiro and his coworkers in New York University found the same reaction independently. We also reported that 5-methylcytosine was deaminated by bisulfite only very slowly. These findings were later utilized by a group of Australian scientists to devise a means to analyze 5-methylcytosine in DNA; thus, a method called 'bisulfite genomic sequencing' was invented by these researchers in 1992. This review describes the author's reflection of the discovery of bisulfite reactions with pyrimidine bases. The author's recent work that has resulted in an improvement of the procedure of analysis by use of a newly devised high concentration bisulfite solution is also described.     

DNA methylation analysis: speedup of bisulfite-mediated deamination of cytosine in the genomic sequencing procedure

Understanding the biological consequences of DNA methylation is a current focus of intensive studies. A standard method for analyzing the methylation at position 5 of cytosines in genomic DNA involves chemical modification of the DNA with bisulfite, followed by PCR amplification and sequencing. Bisulfite deaminates cytosine, but it deaminates 5-methylcytosine only very slowly, thereby allowing determination of the methylated sites. The deamination is usually performed using sodium bisulfite solutions of 3–5 M concentration with an incubation period of 12–16 hr at 50 °C. We demonstrate here that this deamination can be speeded up significantly. We prepared a solution of 10 M bisulfite concentration of pH 5.4 and used it to treat DNA at temperatures up to 90 °C. In an experiment, in which denatured DNA was treated with 9 M bisulfite for 10 min at 90 °C, deamination of cytosines occurred to an extent of 99.6%, while 5-methylcytosine residues in the DNA were deaminated at less than 10%. Using a plasmid DNA fragment, we observed that the DNA can serve as a template for PCR amplification after the bisulfite treatment. This new procedure is expected to offer a significantly improved genomic sequencing method, leading to the promotion of research on understanding the biological and medical significance of DNA methylation.     

The Breit Equation

Contrary to the conventional view, the Breit equation can be solved. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.