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It is the non-methylable analogue of cytosine base. It is not a naturally occurring base but can be incorporated into DNA during replication and into RNA during transcription by growing the cells in media containing 5-azacytidine as a drug or incorporated during in vitro reaction. It is also known to inhibit DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) thereby, causing lack of methylation in DNA sequence, affecting the interaction between regulatory protein and the nucleic acid target. The inhibition of methylation occurs through the formation of stable complexes between the molecule and DNMTs, thereby saturating cell methylation machinery. It is known to target the CpG islands in the human genome, especially in the promoter regions of genes susceptible to aberrant hypermethylation. Such analogues can be used for modulation of DNA methylation (Kaminskas et al. 2005).
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Kaminskas E, Farrell AT, Wang YC, Sridhara R, Pazdur R (2005) FDA drug approval summary: azacitidine (5-azacytidine, Vidaza) for injectable suspension. Oncologist 10(3):176–182
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Brahmachari, V., Jain, S. (2013). 5-azaCytosine. In: Dubitzky, W., Wolkenhauer, O., Cho, KH., Yokota, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Systems Biology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9863-7_862
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9863-7_862
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