DNA methylation is an important regulator of genome function in the eukaryotes, but it is currently unclear if the same is true in prokaryotes. While regulatory functions have been demonstrated for a small number of bacteria, there have been no large-scale studies of prokaryotic methylomes and the full repertoire of targets and biological functions of DNA methylation remains unclear. Here we applied single-molecule, real-time sequencing to directly study the methylomes of 232 phylogenetically diverse prokaryotes. Collectively, we identified 834 methylated motifs, enabling the specific annotation of 415 DNA methyltransferases (MTases), and adding substantially to existing databases of MTase specificities. While the majority of MTases function as components of restriction-modification systems, 139 MTases have no cognate restriction enzyme in the genome, suggesting some other functional role. Several of these ‘orphan’ MTases are conserved across species and exhibit patterns of DNA methylation consistent with known regulatory MTases. Based on these patterns of methylation, we identify candidate novel regulators of gene expression in several phyla of bacteria, and candidate regulators of DNA replication in Haloarchaea. Together these data substantially advance our knowledge of DNA restriction-modification systems, and hint at a wider role for methylation in prokaryotic genome regulation.
Overall design: Single-molecule, real-time sequencing of DNA modifications across 232 diverse prokaryotic genomes.
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