Methylation detection??

[Wood Lab]

Hello out there,
	I am trying to determine if there is any methylation in the 
bacterial system I am using.  So far, I have done the straight-forward 
restriction digestions, using HinfII, etc.  No methylation detected.  I 
have been reading about the bisulfate modification of the cytosines and 
I'll probably give it a try.  My concern is that my critter is very A/T 
rich and only about .75% of E. coli's Cytosines are methylated.  I am 
afraid I'll miss it.  I have also noted that someone determined 1% of 
the adenines of E. coli are methylated.  How did they determine that??  
If I could check for methylation of adenine, that would be great.  

If any of you have information on this or any methods I haven't heard of, 
I would greatly appreciate it.  Oh, Mass-spec-Mass-spec may be out of the 
question, but I'll take info or references on that as well.

Thanks in advance,

Aimee Tucker


Department of Microbiology
University of South Alabama
e-mail woodlab at sungcg.usouthal.edu