Most mammalian cells have one maternal and one paternal copy of most genes, but some genes carry a molecular signature or 'imprint' that silences one copy. Tomas Babak at Stanford University in California and his team mapped the imprinted genes in mouse brains and found far fewer than recent estimates had suggested.
In 2010, two studies found more than 1,300 imprinted genes in the mouse brain, ten times more than traditional counts. The increase was attributed to improved RNA-sequencing technology. When Babak et al. repeated the experiments, they found only 13% of the imprinted genes first identified by the 2010 studies and uncovered statistical weaknesses that resulted in many false-positive signals. Using a different analytical approach, the authors identified roughly 50 new candidate imprinted genes.
Having a catalogue of imprinted genes is important for understanding why imprinting occurs and how it can go awry.
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Fewer imprinted genes at re-count. Nature 484, 145 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/484145a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/484145a
