Imprinting in Biological News

Maternal, paternal genes' tug-of-war may last well into childhood

... at a time. Evidence from disorders of genomic imprinting suggests that maternal and paternal genes may ... of childhood cancers. "Clinical data from imprinting disorders suggest paternally-expressed genes ... to more fully understand the role of genomic imprinting in such disorders. ...

The evolutionary foundation of genomic imprinting in lower vertebrates

... that the evolutionary foundation of genomic imprinting exists in lower vertebrates and genomic imprinting should not be considered as a unique evolutionary ... 2009) of Chinese Science Bulletin . Genomic imprinting has been identified in eutherians, marsupials and ...

Duke scientists map imprinted genes in human genome

... either the mother or the father. This process of imprinting information on a gene is believed to happen ... says Hartemink. Jirtle, who has studied imprinting for years, notes that imprinting is an epigenetic event, meaning its something ...

Specific genetic cause of fetal alcohol-related developmental disorders found

... reverse the epigenetic alterations that disrupt the regulation of Dio3," Sittig said. "When given to the mother or newborn, this might correct the imprinting deficits induced by alcohol." "This is a promising avenue to improve the prognosis of alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorders, for which we ...

No place like home: New theory for how salmon, sea turtles find their birthplace

... to protected areas where we would like them to nest," Lohmann said, noting the animals' endangered status. "It might also be possible to use magnetic imprinting to help re-establish salmon populations in rivers where the original population has been wiped out." ...

Environmental epigenetics has potential for preventing and treating disease

... In addition, mutations that occur in non-imprinted regions can influence the regulation of imprinted genes. The authors previously demonstrated that imprinting evolved anywhere from 230 to 150 million years ago, arising in mammals with the evolution of the placenta. They note that the expression of imprinted ...

Human embryonic stem cells remain embryonic because of epigenetic factors

... proteins are decorated with different marks, which can affect the various activities of the modified DNA such as transcription, gene silencing, imprinting and replication. Such marks key roles in the process of cellular differentiation, allowing cells to maintain different characteristics despite ...

Scientists find clue to mechanisms of gene signaling and regulation

... base pair repeats are also differentially methylated. We want to discover how many regions of differential methylation exist and whether or not this imprinting has any impact on disease development." Scientists already have learned that cancer genes contain "islands" of CG concentrations that are ...

Inheritance outside DNA

... heart of the mystery of stem cells. Genomic imprinting is a type of epigenetic change that causes one ... the general population—that involves the loss of imprinting on an insulin-like growth factor gene called IGF2. Loss of imprinting of IGF2 has been associated statistically with ...

Parental genes do what's best for baby

... “But some genes ?through a process called genomic imprinting ?only use one parent’s copy; the spare copy from ... silenced by a chemical stamp.? The concept of imprinting has long puzzled scientists as it appears to ... and so are more susceptible to disease. Errors in imprinting have also been linked to cancer and other genetic ...

Non-coding RNAs help silence the mammalian transcription

... of the identical portion of chromosome 15. imprinting determines which disorder arises: When the ... "As we explore the mechanism of genomic imprinting in greater detail, it is becoming clear that ... lends further support to the argument that imprinting arose gradually over a long period in mammals, ...

It's not all genetic: Common epigenetic problem doubles cancer risk in mice

... have already noted an association between loss of imprinting of IGF2 and colon cancer in people, the current ... were designed to find out whether the loss of imprinting is involved in cancer's development or just in ... "But, in this case, our results show that loss of imprinting of IGF2 contributes to colon cancer's development ...

Penn researchers replace organ in adult mice using 'single-parent' stem cells

... imprinting, where cells will read certain genes from only one parent. imprinting failures could lead to the death of an embryo and are frequently ... of genomic imprinting," McLaughlin said. "It turns out that genomic imprinting may be more a concern for developing stages and not so much a factor in ...

Zebra finch males prefer females with exaggerated maternal traits

... stimulus over an unfamiliar one, it has generally been assumed that imprinting itself could not give rise to preferences for novel, exaggerated traits. ... to distinguish different stimuli, but the presence of this effect in the imprinting process has not been demonstrated previously. The outcome of the study ...

How IVF could be causing genetic errors in embryos

... that preliminary work investigating genetic imprinting in mouse embryos had shown that certain culture ... the expression of several imprinted genes. imprinting is the process by which some genes are activated ... why these techniques appear to be affecting the imprinting of these genes. We hope this understanding will ...