Hypothesis: gonadal temperature influences sex-specific imprinting
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Updated: Apr 24, 2026

Dissection of Larval Zebrafish Gonadal Tissue
Published on: April 26, 2017
Paolo Prontera1, Emilio Donti1
1Medical Genetics Unit, Department of Surgical and Biomedical Sciences, University of Perugia Perugia, Italy.
Abstract:
Various explanations have been advanced for the evolution of genomic imprinting, the most popular of these being the parental conflict hypothesis. However, while this theory may explain why there has been selection for imprinting certain genes, it does not explain how the maternal and paternal genomes can be distinguished from each other. Here, we hypothesize that the temperature at which male and female gonads are physiologically exposed could be, at least for some loci, the primary factor leading to the different imprinting between the sexes.
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