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Genomic imprinting is disrupted in interspecific Peromyscus hybrids

Nature Genetics volume 20, pages 362–365 (1998)Cite this article

A Correction to this article was published on 01 February 1999

Abstract

Genomic imprinting, the unequal expression of gene alleles on the basis of parent of origin, is a major exception to mendelian laws of inheritance 1 . By maintaining one allele of a gene in a silent state, imprinted genes discard the advantages of diploidy, and for this reason the rationale for the evolution of imprinting has been debated 2 . One explanation is the parent-offspring conflict model, which proposes that imprinting arose in polyandrous mammals as the result of a parental conflict over the allocation of maternal resources to embryos 3 . This theory predicts that there should be no selection for imprinting in a monogamous species. Crosses between the monogamous rodent species Peromyscus polionotus and the polyandrous Peromyscus maniculatus yield progeny with parent-of-origin growth defects that could be explained if imprinting was absent in the monogamous species 4 . We find, however, that imprinting is maintained in P. polionotus , but there is widespread disruption of imprinting in the hybrids. We suggest that the signals governing genomic imprinting are rapidly evolving and that disruptions in the process may contribute to mammalian speciation.

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Figure 1: Allelic expression of genes in P. polionotus.
Figure 2: Allelic expression of paternally expressed genes in Peromyscus hybrids.
Figure 3: Allelic expression of maternally expressed genes in Peromyscus hybrids.
Figure 4: Northern analysis of RNAs in Peromyscus hybrids.
Figure 5: DNA Methylation of H19 in Peromyscus hybrids.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank W. Dawson for his expert advice on Peromyscus and his support of this work. We also thank E. Roscoe for technical assistance and J. Fossella for his many intellectual contributions to the work. This work was supported by a grant from the NIGMS (GM51460). P.B.V. was a NSF/Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow and S.M.T. is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, 08544, New Jersey, USA

    Paul B. Vrana, Xiao-Juan Guan, Robert S. Ingram & Shirley M. Tilghman.

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  1. Paul B. Vrana
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  2. Xiao-Juan Guan
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Correspondence to Shirley M. Tilghman..

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Vrana, P., Guan, XJ., Ingram, R. et al. Genomic imprinting is disrupted in interspecific Peromyscus hybrids . Nat Genet 20, 362–365 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/3833

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