Research Paper|Volume 8, Issue 4|pp 636—641

Quantification of global mitochondrial DNA methylation levels and inverse correlation with age at two CpG sites

Shakhawan K. Mawlood¹, Lynn Dennany², Nigel Watson², John Dempster¹, Benjamin S. Pickard¹

¹Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
²Centre for Forensic Science, Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Received: October 26, 2015Accepted: January 20, 2016Published: February 17, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 Mawlood et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Mammalian ageing features biological attrition evident at cellular, genetic and epigenetic levels. Mutation of mitochondrial DNA, and nuclear DNA methylation changes are well established correlates of ageing. The methylation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a new and incompletely described phenomenon with unknown biological control and significance. Here we describe the bisulphite sequencing of mtDNA from 82 individuals aged 18‐91 years. We detected low and variable levels of mtDNA methylation at 54 of 133 CpG sites interrogated. Regression analysis of methylation levels at two CpG sites (M1215 and M1313) located within the 12S ribosomal RNA gene showed an inverse correlation with subject age suggesting their utility as epigenetic markers of ageing.