Identification of Marsupial-Specific Genomic Imprinting Loci

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Genomic imprinting is a unique regulatory mechanism of gene expression, causes monoallelic gene expression by silencing of one of two genes derived from both parents. In higher vertebrates, only mammals have genomic imprinting and it is essential for normal embryonic development. However, monoallelic gene expression has a critical demerit in that only one hit of recessive mutations could lead abnormal phenotypes immediately. In this research, we have developed the novel approach identifying imprinted loci from marsupial genomic DNA as the first step to investigate why and how genomic imprinting arose in mammalian evolution.