ArticleCell chemical biology2021
Discovery of an Unnatural DNA Modification Derived from a Natural Secondary Metabolite.
Article in Cell chemical biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Beyond Histone Demethylation: Mechanisms ofJACS Au · 2026Article
- Mapping Protein Occupancy on DNA with an Unnatural Cytosine Modification.ACS chemical biology · 2026Article
- Enzymatic, Nondestructive Sequencing of 5-Methylcytosine with Direct Methylation Sequencing (DM-Seq).Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2026Article
- Carboxymethylcytosine is a natural base modification and a handle for bacteriophage DNA hypermodification.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Direct single-nucleotide resolution sequencing of DNA 5-methylcytosine using engineered DNA methyltransferase-mediated CMD-seq.Chemical science · 2025Article
- Revealing Drivers for Carboxy-ACS chemical biology · 2023Article
- Direct enzymatic sequencing of 5-methylcytosine at single-base resolution.Nature chemical biology · 2023Article
- DNA Labeling Using DNA Methyltransferases.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Despite widespread interest for understanding how modified bases have evolved their contemporary functions, limited experimental evidence exists for measuring how close an organism is to accidentally creating a new, modified base within the framework of its existing genome. Here, we describe the biochemical and structural basis for how a single-point mutation in E. coli's naturally occurring cytosine methyltransferase can surprisingly endow a neomorphic ability to create the unnatural DNA base, 5-carboxymethylcytosine (5cxmC), in vivo. Mass spectrometry, bacterial genetics, and structure-guided biochemistry reveal this base to be exclusively derived from the natural but sparse secondary metabolite carboxy-S-adenosyl-L-methionine (CxSAM). Our discovery of a new, unnatural DNA modification reveals insights into the substrate selectivity of DNA methyltransferase enzymes, offers a promising new biotechnological tool for the characterization of the mammalian epigenome, and provides an unexpected model for how neomorphic bases could arise in nature from repurposed host metabolites.
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Registered trials
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