Writing in the February 17, 2012 issue of the journal Cell, researchers at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Toronto Western Research Institute peel away some of the enduring mystery of how zygotes or fertilized eggs determine which copies of parental genes will be used or ignored.
In the Cell paper, a team of scientists, led by Bing Ren, PhD, head of the Laboratory of Gene Regulation at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at UC San Diego, describe in greater detail how differential DNA methylation in the two parental genomes set the stage for selective expression of imprinted genes in the mouse. Differential DNA methylation is essential to normal development in humans and other higher organisms. It involves the addition of hydrocarbon compounds called methyls to cytosine, one of the four bases or building blocks of DNA. Such addition alters the expression of different genes, boosting or suppressing them to help direct embryonic growth and development.