There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Parental genomic imprinting is characterized by the expression of a selected panel of genes from one of the two parental alleles. Recent evidence shows that DNA methylation and histone modifications are responsible for this parent-of-origin-dependent expression of imprinted genes. Because similar epigenetic marks have been recruited independently in plants and mammals, the only organisms in which imprinted gene loci have been identified so far, this phenomenon represents a case for convergent evolution. Here we discuss the emerging parallels in imprinting in both taxa. We also describe the significance of imprinting for reproduction and discuss potential models for its evolution.

Related collections

Author and article information

Journal

PubMed ID:: 17316885

DOI:: 10.1016/j.tig.2007.02.004

ScienceOpen disciplines: Chemistry

Keywords: Animals,Biological Evolution,DNA Methylation,Gene Expression Regulation,Genomic Imprinting,Mammals,genetics,Plants

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Chemistry

Keywords: Animals, Biological Evolution, DNA Methylation, Gene Expression Regulation, Genomic Imprinting, Mammals, genetics, Plants

Comments

Comment on this article

scite_

0

Smart Citations

0

Citing PublicationsSupportingMentioningContrasting

View Citations

See how this article has been cited at scite.ai

scite shows how a scientific paper has been cited by providing the context of the citation, a classification describing whether it supports, mentions, or contrasts the cited claim, and a label indicating in which section the citation was made.