Hippocampal DNA methylation promote memory persistence by facilitating systems consolidation and cortical engram stabilization

The long-term stabilization of memory traces or engram involves the rapid formation of cortical engrams during encoding that mature functionally over time guided by the activity of the hippocampus. The molecular mechanisms that regulate this process remain largely unknown. Here, we found that hippocampal DNA methylation converts short-lasting into long-lasting memories by promoting systems consolidation and the stabilization of cortical engrams. Overall design: Differential gene expression analysis of RNA-seq data for hippocampus tissue of mice that were trained in contextual fear conditioning and either expressed a Control or overexpressed Dnmt3a2.