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The phenomenon of genomic imprinting was discovered 40 years ago

Some genes carry an ‘imprint’ on either the maternal or the paternal copy, which determines whether or not that copy is expressed. This 1984 discovery changed how scientists think about gene regulation and inheritance.
  1. Anne C. Ferguson-Smith

    1. Anne C. Ferguson-Smith is in the Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EH, UK.

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  2. Marisa S. Bartolomei

    1. Marisa S. Bartolomei is in the Department of Cell & Developmental Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.

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In mammals, the expression of certain genes depends on which parent they were inherited from. For most genes in a cell, both copies are turned either on or off. But for a small subset of genes in mammals, one copy is on and the other off. For some of these genes, it is the maternal copy that is on; for others, it is the paternally inherited copy. This remarkable phenomenon, known as genomic imprinting, was discovered 40 years ago in landmark embryo-manipulation experiments1–3 reported by Surani, Barton and Norris in Nature1,3 and by McGrath and Solter in Cell2.

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Nature 629, 763-765 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01338-4

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