Aberrant imprinting may underlie evolution of parthenogenesis

Kirioukhova, Olga; Shah, Jubin N; Larsen, Danaé S; Tayyab, Muhammad; Mueller, Nora E; Govind, Geetha; Baroux, Célia; Federer, Michael; Gheyselinck, Jacqueline; Barrell, Philippa J; Ma, Hong; Sprunck, Stefanie; Huettel, Bruno; Wallace, Helen; Grossniklaus, Ueli; Johnston, Amal J

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-27863-7

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Kirioukhova, O., Shah, J. N., Larsen, D. S., Tayyab, M., Mueller, N. E., Govind, G., Baroux, C., Federer, M., Gheyselinck, J., Barrell, P. J., Ma, H., Sprunck, S., Huettel, B., Wallace, H., Grossniklaus, U., & Johnston, A. J. (2018). Aberrant imprinting may underlie evolution of parthenogenesis. Scientific Reports, 8, 10626. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-27863-7

Abstract

Genomic imprinting confers parent-of-origin-specific gene expression, thus non-equivalent and complementary function of parental genomes. As a consequence, genomic imprinting poses an epigenetic barrier to parthenogenesis in sexual organisms. We report aberrant imprinting in Boechera, a genus in which apomicts evolved from sexuals multiple times. Maternal activation of a MADS-box gene, a homolog of which is imprinted and paternally expressed in the sexual relative Arabidopsis, is accompanied by locus-specific DNA methylation changes i