Journal article

Conservation of the H19 noncoding RNA and H19-IGF2 imprinting mechanism in therians

Guillaume Smits, Andrew J Mungall, Sam Griffiths-Jones, Paul Smith, Delphine Beury, Lucy Matthews, Jane Rogers, Andrew J Pask, Geoff Shaw, John L VandeBerg, John R McCarrey, Marilyn B Renfree, Wolf Reik, Ian Dunham

NATURE GENETICS | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2008

Abstract

Comparisons between eutherians and marsupials suggest limited conservation of the molecular mechanisms that control genomic imprinting in mammals. We have studied the evolution of the imprinted IGF2-H19 locus in therians. Although marsupial orthologs of protein-coding exons were easily identified, the use of evolutionarily conserved regions and low-stringency Bl2seq comparisons was required to delineate a candidate H19 noncoding RNA sequence. The therian H19 orthologs show miR-675 and exon structure conservation, suggesting functional selection on both features. Transcription start site sequences and poly(A) signals are also conserved. As in eutherians, marsupial H19 is maternally expressed ..

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