Evolution of imprinting via lineage-specific insertion of retroviral promoters

Members of the Lorincz Lab, alongside our collaborators in the labs of Dr. Louis Lefebvre and Dr. Hisato Kobayashi, recently published a paper in Nature Communications. The paper explores a mechanism for the evolution of imprinted genes, showing how transcription from endogenous retroviral elements adjacent to canonical gene promoters cause DNA methylation over these gene promoters in female germ cells. This DNA methylation can be maintained following fertilization, and subsequently prevents expression from the methylated allele in the resulting embryo.

Read the paper here!