Fig. 9: The dual binding patterns of mammalian MBD2 and Cel-MBD-2.

According to previous human and mouse studies, most MBD3 binding regions overlap with MBD2 and NuRD, but there are many unique MBD2 binding sites of high 5mC density (left). In a cytosine methylation-free context in C. elegans, we propose a model for the distribution of Cel-MBD-2 (right). Despite the absence of methylation in the C. elegans genome and the lack of methyl-binding domain in Cel-MBD-2, the dual binding patterns of Cel-MBD-2 are observed as in mammalian MBD-2, in which a small proportion of MBD-2 binds to open chromatin in association with NuRD complex and a large proportion binds to silent regions enriched with H3K27me3 and H3K9me2/3, independent of NuRD complex. The organism icons are created in BioRender. Zheng, C. (2025) https://BioRender.com/rfw8dhr.