The landscape of genomic imprinting across diverse adult human tissues

Genome Res. 2015 Jul;25(7):927-36. doi: 10.1101/gr.192278.115. Epub 2015 May 7.

Abstract

Genomic imprinting is an important regulatory mechanism that silences one of the parental copies of a gene. To systematically characterize this phenomenon, we analyze tissue specificity of imprinting from allelic expression data in 1582 primary tissue samples from 178 individuals from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project. We characterize imprinting in 42 genes, including both novel and previously identified genes. Tissue specificity of imprinting is widespread, and gender-specific effects are revealed in a small number of genes in muscle with stronger imprinting in males. IGF2 shows maternal expression in the brain instead of the canonical paternal expression elsewhere. Imprinting appears to have only a subtle impact on tissue-specific expression levels, with genes lacking a systematic expression difference between tissues with imprinted and biallelic expression. In summary, our systematic characterization of imprinting in adult tissues highlights variation in imprinting between genes, individuals, and tissues.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Alleles
  • Cluster Analysis
  • DNA Methylation
  • Databases, Nucleic Acid
  • Female
  • Gene Expression Regulation
  • Genetic Variation
  • Genomic Imprinting*
  • Genomics*
  • Genotype
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Organ Specificity / genetics
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sex Factors