Latana Grub from Vanderbilt University spoke at the Nanopore Community Meeting in Boston. The session was titled “Long-read sequencing reveals the molecular landscape of mitochondrial DNA 6mA methylation.” Grub studies mitochondria. They noted that mitochondria are important organelles with their own genome and are critical for energy. Mitochondrial DNA has only one regulatory system. Grub and team used C. elegans to learn about methylation of the mitochondrial DNA. They learned that 6mA is present in most mitochondrial reads! It also appears to be heterogeneous. Grub has found that methylation of the mitochondrial DNA may be involved in stress responses. What an exciting project!
