Simultaneous Detection of DNA Adenine and Cytosine Methylation using NT-seq [series1: no enrichment]

DNA methylation plays important roles in foreign DNA defense, mismatch repair, and gene regulation in prokaryotic genomes. Existing methods for DNA methylation detection using next-generation sequencing (NGS) are incapable of simultaneously detecting multiple types of DNA methylation. Here, we present nitrite treatment followed by sequencing (NT-seq), a sequencing method to simultaneously detect adenine and cytosine methylation. We demonstrated that NT-seq reliably detects three types of methylation motifs in E. coli and H. pylori genomes. We further applied NT-seq to a microbial community standard for de novo methylation motif discovery. Finally, by coupling methyl DNA immunoprecipitation and NT-seq (DIP-NT-seq), we showed that 6mA could be accurately mapped at single-base resolution in the bacterial and eukaryotic genomes. NT-seq thus provides a simple and reliable solution for detecting multiple types of DNA methylations. NT-seq in both native and amplified genomic DNA without any enrichment