Overexpression of Human-Derived DNMT3A Induced Intergenerational Inheritance of Active DNA Methylation Changes in Rat Sperm.

ABSTRACT: DNA methylation is the major focus of studies on paternal epigenetic inheritance in mammals, but most previous studies about inheritable DNA methylation changes are passively induced by environmental factors. However, it is unclear whether the active changes mediated by variations in DNA methyltransferase activity are heritable. Here, we established human-derived DNMT3A (hDNMT3A) transgenic rats to study the effect of hDNMT3A overexpression on the DNA methylation pattern of rat sperm and to investigate whether this actively altered DNA methylation status is inheritable. Our results revealed that hDNMT3A was overexpressed in the testis of transgenic rats and induced genome-wide alterations in the DNA methylation pattern of rat sperm. Among 5438 reliable loci iden

SUBMITTER: Zheng X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5733082 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature