A screen for retrotransposed imprinted genes reveals an association between X chromosome homology and maternal germ-line methylation.

ABSTRACT: Imprinted genes undergo epigenetic modifications during gametogenesis, which lead to transcriptional silencing of either the maternally or the paternally derived allele in the subsequent generation. Previous work has suggested an association between imprinting and the products of retrotransposition, but the nature of this link is not well defined. In the mouse, three imprinted genes have been described that originated by retrotransposition and overlap CpG islands which undergo methylation during oogenesis. Nap1l5, U2af1-rs1, and Inpp5f_v2 are likely to encode proteins and share two additional genetic properties: they are located within introns of host transcripts and are derived from parental genes on the X chromosome. Using these sequence features alone, we identified Mcts2, a novel candi

SUBMITTER: Wood AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1796624 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature