Maternal DNMT3A-dependent de novo methylation of the paternal genome inhibits gene expression in the early embryo
Julien Richard Albert’s paper in Nature Communications, published October 27, 2020, has been featured by the editor Carolina Perdigoto. In this publication, Julien pursued allele-specific DNA methylation changes in the early embryo. He found a subset of regions on the paternal genome that paradoxically gain DNAme following fertilization, flying in the face of the dogma of DNAme dynamics for these stages. In collaboration with Hiroyuki Sasaki’s lab, he showed that this gain of DNAme is dependent on maternally deposited DNMT3A.
