Diverse histone modifications on histone 3 lysine 9 and their relation to DNA methylation in specifying gene silencing

Background Previous studies of individual genes have shown that in a self-enforcing way, dimethylation at histone 3 lysine 9 (dimethyl-H3K9) and DNA methylation cooperate to maintain a repressive mode of inactive genes. Less clear is whether this cooperation is generalized in mammalian genomes, such as mouse genome. Here we use epigenomic tools to simultaneously interrogate chromatin modifications and DNA methylation in a mouse leukemia cell line, L1210.