2 On the Early History of 5-mC In the fall of 1966, Norton D. Zinder of Rockefeller University in New York City presented the Harvey Lecture on Phage RNA as Genetic Material (Zinder 1966). Frankly,I do not remember manydetailsofhis talk. However, one ofhis concluding remarks, in which he thanked his teacher Rollin Hotchkiss, stuck in my mind andbecame an important leitmotiffor much of my own scienti?c career. Norton s relevant passages went somethinglikethis (approximate quotation): When we hope to have made a scienti?c discovery, we better spend much of our time immediately after this fortunate event in trying to counter our own beliefsand interpretations. Onlyafter a lot of painstaking scrutiny involving many control experiments when our discoveryhas stood the test of careful consideration, can one hope that our colleagues will beabletocon?rm the new ?ndings. Of course, it is a major task of the scienti?c community to respectfully meet supposedly novel announ- ments withdisbelief and skepticism and in turn commence the process of disproving these concepts. Consistent con?rmations, with plenty of modi?cations to be sure, will providethe encouragement necessary to continue and to improve the initial observations and conclusions. Apparently, the scienti?c tradition re?ected in this overall cautious attitude had emanatedfrom the laboratory of Oswald Avery that Rollin Hotchkiss had been trained in. This certainly most important of scienti?ccredos seems tocontradict intuitively held notions and might bethought to run counter to general practice.

The Almost-Forgotten Fifth Nucleotide in DNA: An Introduction

Pattern Formation
Replication and Translation of Epigenetic Information
DNA Methyltransferases: Facts, Clues, Mysteries
DNA Methylation in Plants
Determinant of Promoter Activity
De Novo Methylation, Long-Term Promoter Silencing, Methylation Patterns in the Human Genome, and Consequences of Foreign DNA Insertion
DNA Methyltransferases
Establishment and Maintenance of DNA Methylation Patterns in Mammals
Molecular Enzymology of Mammalian DNA Methyltransferases
Epigenetic Phenomena
Familial Hydatidiform Molar Pregnancy: The Germline Imprinting Defect Hypothesis?
Dual Inheritance
Mutagenesis and Repair
Mutagenesis at Methylated CpG Sequences
Cytosine Methylation and DNA Repair.