Short project summary

My PhD project explores epigenetic regulatory mechanisms in beetles, particularly focusing on the variations in CpG methylation and the presence of DNA methyltransferase genes (Dnmt1 and 3). Despite the loss of CpG methylation in some beetle species, the knock-down of Dnmt1 still has significant and sometimes lethal effects, suggesting additional functions of those genes. We aim to understand the evolution of epigenetic regulation systems, uncover alternative functions of DNA methyltransferases, and assess the interplay between DNA methylation and histone modification in ten beetle species using bioinformatics, sequencing technologies (Enzymatic Methyl-Seq, Cut&Tag, RNA-Seq) and functional validation.