Imprinting articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studies on parent-of-origin effects have been limited in terms of sample size due to lack of parental genomes or known genealogies. Here, the authors develop a method to infer the parent-of-origin of an individual alleles in biobank-scale datasets, without requiring parental genomes or prior knowledge of genealogy, allowing discovery of parent-of-origin effects with an unprecedented sample size.

    • Robin J. Hofmeister
    • , Simone Rubinacci
    •  & Olivier Delaneau
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reprogramming somatic cells to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is associated with epigenetic alterations. Here the authors assess DNA methylation in detail in multiple female and male mouse iPSC lines generated with different protocols and find that defects depend on the sex of donor cells and can be partially mitigated by Vitamin C.

    • Maria Arez
    • , Melanie Eckersley-Maslin
    •  & Simão Teixeira da Rocha
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors investigate whether for imprinted genes the parent-of-origin of the expressed allele or rather appropriate gene dosage is more important for normal development. Using the differentially methylated region of Dlk1-Dio3 gene involved in imprinting, they show that correct parent-of-origin imprinting pattern is secondary to balanced gene dosage.

    • Ariella Weinberg-Shukron
    • , Raz Ben-Yair
    •  & Yonatan Stelzer
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors show that a high-fat diet in pregnant mice can release silencing of the imprinted Dlk1 locus in multiple generations of offspring. They found that this occurs via changes in microRNA expression at the locus of interest, as well as transcriptional changes across the genome, in the developing oocytes.

    • Mathew Van de Pette
    • , Andrew Dimond
    •  & Amanda G. Fisher
  • Article
    | Open Access

    A SNP distant from the human insulin (INS) gene near the KRTAP5-6 gene confers increased susceptibility to type 2 diabetes when present on the paternal allele while decreased susceptibility when on the maternal allele. Here the authors show that long-range contacts between the INS locus and the KRTAP5-6 gene locus distinguish paternal and maternal alleles.

    • Xing Jian
    •  & Gary Felsenfeld
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In most mammals, imprinted genes contain epigenetic marks that differ in each parental genome and control their parent-of-origin-specific expression. Here, the authors map imprinted genes in mouse preimplantation embryos and find that imprinted gene expression in blastocysts is mainly dependent on Polycomb-mediated H3K27me3-associated gene silencing.

    • Laura Santini
    • , Florian Halbritter
    •  & Martin Leeb
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The paternal genome in mice undergoes widespread DNA methylation loss post-fertilization. Here, the authors apply allele-specific analysis of WGBS data to show that a number of genomic regions are simultaneously de novo methylated on the paternal genome dependent on maternal DNMT3A activity, which induces transcriptional silencing of this allele in the early embryo.

    • Julien Richard Albert
    • , Wan Kin Au Yeung
    •  & Matthew Lorincz
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although many species-specific imprinted genes have been identified, how the evolutionary switch from biallelic to imprinted expression occurs is still unknown. Here authors find that lineage-specific ERVs active as oocyte promoters can induce de novo DNA methylation at gDMRs and imprinting.

    • Aaron B. Bogutz
    • , Julie Brind’Amour
    •  & Louis Lefebvre
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The potential role of TET proteins in adult neurogenesis is unknown. In this study, authors show that TET3 is essentially required for the maintenance of the NSC pool in the adult subventricular zone niche by preventing premature differentiation of NSCs, via direct binding and repression of the paternal transcribed allele of the imprinted gene Snrpn

    • Raquel Montalbán-Loro
    • , Anna Lozano-Ureña
    •  & Sacri R. Ferrón
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animal studies have shown that the nutritional status of parents can predispose the offspring to obesity and obesity-related diseases. Here the authors show that cardiac dysfunction induced by a high-fat diet persists for two generations in Drosophila, and that targeted expression of ATGL/bmm in the offspring, as well as inhibition of H3K27 trimethylation, is cardioprotective.

    • Maria Clara Guida
    • , Ryan Tyge Birse
    •  & Rolf Bodmer
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Brown adipose tissue (BAT) thermogenesis counteracts obesity and promotes metabolic health. The role of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the regulation of this process is not well understood. Here the authors identify a maternally expressed lncRNA, H19, that increases BAT oxidative metabolism and energy expenditure.

    • Elena Schmidt
    • , Ines Dhaouadi
    •  & Jan-Wilhelm Kornfeld
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Genomic imprinting restricts transcription to predominantly one parental allele. Here the authors perform a screen for epigenetic factors involved in paternal allelic silencing at the Kcnq1ot1 imprinted domain in mouse extraembryonic endoderm stem cells and characterize a role for specific nucleoporins in mediating Kcnq1ot1 imprinted regulation.

    • Saqib S. Sachani
    • , Lauren S. Landschoot
    •  & Mellissa R. W. Mann
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In mammalian female germ cells, parent-specific epigenetic marks are erased and the X chromosome reactivated before entry into meiosis. Here, by combining parental haplotype reconstruction with single-cell transcriptomics of human female embryonic germ cells, the authors demonstrate that epigenetic reprogramming occurs in a heterogeneous fashion and during a broad time window up to week 14.

    • Ábel Vértesy
    • , Wibowo Arindrarto
    •  & Susana M. Chuva de Sousa Lopes
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Adult height has a strong genetic component and is highly heritable. Here the authors whole-genome sequence 8,453 Icelanders and find novel parent-of-origin derived associations in IGF2-H19 and DLK1-MEG3.

    • Stefania Benonisdottir
    • , Asmundur Oddsson
    •  & Kari Stefansson
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Selective biallelic expression of certain genes through genomic imprinting are known to play a role in controlling neurogenesis in the adult mammalian brain. Here the authors investigate the role of imprinting in the dosage control of Igf2 and its relevance for the function of IGF2 as a neurogenic regulator in the mouse brain.

    • S. R. Ferrón
    • , E. J. Radford
    •  & A. C. Ferguson-Smith
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reprogramming of mouse somatic cells into iPSCs often generates pre-iPSCs, low-grade iPSCs that show abnormal Dlk1-Dio3 imprinting, and fully reprogrammed, high-grade iPSCs. Here, the authors show that germ-cell marker Dppa3 enhances reprogramming kinetics, critical for the maintenance of Dlk1-Dio3 imprinting and generation of fully reprogrammed iPSCs.

    • Xingbo Xu
    • , Lukasz Smorag
    •  & D. V. Krishna Pantakani
  • Article |

    Imprinted mouse X-chromosome inactivation is controlled by two long non-coding RNAs, Tsix and Xist. Here, Maclary et al. demonstrate that Tsix is dispensable during the initiation and maintenance of X-inactivation in vivo and in vitro, but required to prevent Xist expression as trophectodermal progenitors differentiate.

    • Emily Maclary
    • , Emily Buttigieg
    •  & Sundeep Kalantry
  • Article |

    The miR-372-3 cluster has a role in oncogenesis. In this study, by utilizing parthenogenetic induced pluripotent stem cells, that lack the paternal genome, Stelzer et al.report that these miR-372-3 are negatively regulated by a paternally imprinted antisense transcript and that loss of its expression promotes oncogenesis.

    • Yonatan Stelzer
    • , Ido Sagi
    •  & Nissim Benvenisty