Discovery of novel imprinted genes by transcriptional analysis of parthenogenetic embryonic stem cells

Parthenogenetic embryonic stem cells (PESCs) may have future utility in cell replacement therapies. We examined genome-wide mRNA expression profiles of monkey PESCs relative to ESCs derived from fertilized embryos. Several known paternally-imprinted genes were in the highly down-regulated group in PESCs compared to ESCs. Allele specific expression analysis of paternally-imprinted genes, i.e., those genes whose expression is down-regulated in PESCs, led to the identification of one novel candidate that was exclusively expressed from a paternal allele. Our findings suggest that PESCs could be used as a model for studying genomic imprinting and in the discovery of novel imprinted genes.

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Sritanaudomchai H, Ma H, Clepper L, Gokhale S, Bogan R, Hennebold J, Wolf D, Mitalipov S