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Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Determining the Role of Maternally-Expressed Genes in Early Development with Maternal Crispants
Published on: December 21, 2021
Disruption of parental-specific expression of imprinted genes in uniparental fetuses
Hidehiko Ogawa1, Qiong Wu, Junichi Komiyama
1Department of Bioscience, Tokyo University of Agriculture, 1-1-1 Sakuragaoka, Tokyo 156-8502, Japan.
Abstract:
In mammals, imprinted genes show parental origin-dependent expression based on epigenetic modifications called genomic imprinting (GI), which are established independently during spermatogenesis or oogenesis. Due to GI, uniparental fetuses never develop to term. To determine whether such expression of imprinted genes is maintained in uniparental mouse fetuses, we analyzed the expression of 20 paternally and 11 maternally expressed genes in androgenetic and parthenogenetic fetuses. Four genes of each type were expressed in both groups of fetuses. Furthermore, quantitative analysis showed that expression levels deviated from the presumed levels for some imprinted genes. These results suggest that mechanisms acting in trans between paternal and maternal alleles are involved in the appropriate expression of some imprinted genes.
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