Bloomberg Distinguished Professor – Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA
Non-Mendelian inheritance in hybrid mice
Host: M. Baralle
Abstract
TMendel’s laws of inheritance serve as the cornerstone of modern genetics, shaping much of our understanding of the inheritance of monogenic and complex phenotypes. However, epigenetic information has been shown to violate Mendelian inheritance through genomic imprinting, i.e. parent-of-origin-specific DNA methylation patterns. Despite its established potential to violate Mendel’s laws, comparatively little is known about the intergenerational inheritance of DNA methylation patterns. We have devised a comprehensive approach to investigate the inheritance of epigenetic patterns in mice using long-read nanopore sequencing in conjunction with a novel computational pipeline designed to analyze allele-specific methylation patterns genome-wide. We applied these methods to the study of offspring of inter-specific hybrids. In addition to widespread Mendelian patterns of epigenetic inheritance, we were also able to identify abundant examples of non-Mendelian forms of epigenetic inheritance which have not previously been observed in naturally occurring mammalian genomes. These include emergent epigenetic patterns, in which at least one allele of the heterozygous offspring exhibits a methylation pattern not observed in either parent, as well as examples of genomic imprinting and paramutation. These results indicate a previously inapparent well of epigenetic trait modification detectable using novel methodology.
International Seminar Programme
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