04 Mar Look Like Your Dad? Some Genes Preferentially Expressed From Fathers

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Fernando Pardo-Manuel De Villena, PhD
Professor and Associate Chair for Research
Department of Genetics
School of Medicine
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: We set out to identify mutations that affect diseases through changes in gene expression. Our first major finding is that some mouse populations such as the Collabaorative Cross are exceptionally good models to achieve this goal.
We also wanted to sort out an ongoing controversy about the number, location and type of genes that are differentially expressed when you inherit them from your mom or your dad (so called imprinted genes).  We conclude that to some extent both sides were right; there are only a limited number of imprinted genes in the classical sense but there are also hundreds or thousands of genes that are preferentially expressed from the father.

Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?

Response: Parent of origin effects in human genetic studies are frequently ignored, our results suggest that this may bias our conclusions.

Medical Research: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Response: Unexpected discoveries such as the parental effect of gene expression described in our Nature Genetics paper frequently rely on model organisms, in our case the house mouse.  These studies are critical because the probability of making these initial findings in humans is very low due to a combination of experimental and financial constraints.  Once you discover something important in mice you can design a targeted experiment to test its presence and impact in humans.

The second recommendation for researchers interested in genetics and genomics is to expand your search from the gene level to chromosomes or the entire genome. Some effects are difficult to observe on a gene by gene basis but become apparent on global analysis.

Citation:

Crowley JJ¹, Zhabotynsky V¹, Sun W², Huang S³, Pakatci IK³, Kim Y¹, Wang JR³, Morgan AP⁴, Calaway JD⁴, Aylor DL¹, Yun Z¹, Bell TA⁴, Buus RJ⁴, Calaway ME⁴, Didion JP⁴, Gooch TJ⁴, Hansen SD⁴, Robinson NN⁴, Shaw GD⁴, Spence JS¹, Quackenbush CR¹, Barrick CJ¹, Nonneman RJ¹, Kim K⁵, Xenakis J⁵, Xie Y¹, Valdar W⁶, Lenarcic AB¹, Wang W³, Welsh CE³, Fu CP³, Zhang Z³, Holt J³, Guo Z³, Threadgill DW⁷, Tarantino LM⁸, Miller DR⁴, Zou F⁵, McMillan L³, Sullivan PF⁹, Pardo-Manuel de Villena F⁴.

Analyses of allele-specific gene expression in highly divergent mouse crosses identifies pervasive allelic imbalance.

Nat Genet. 2015 Mar 2. doi: 10.1038/ng.3222. [Epub ahead of print]
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Fernando Pardo-Manuel De Villena, Ph (2015). Look Like Your Dad? Some Genes Preferentially Expressed From Fathers 

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Last Updated on March 4, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD