title: Does genomic imprinting play a role in autoimmunity?
abstract: In the 19th century Gregor Mendel defined the laws of genetic inheritance by crossing different types of peas. From these results arose his principle of equivalence: the gene will have the same behaviour whether it is inherited from the mother or the father. Today, several key exceptions to this principle are known, for example sex-linked traits and genes in the mitochondrial genome, whose inheritance patterns are referred to as 'non mendelian'. A third, important exception in mammals is that of genomic imprinting, where transcripts are expressed in a monoallelic fashion from only the maternal or the paternal chromosome. In this chapter, we discuss how parent-of-origin effects and genomic imprinting may play a role in autoimmunity and speculate how imprinted miRNAs may influence the expression of many target autoimmune associated genes.
authors.affiliation: Imprinting and Cancer Group, Cancer Epigenetics and Biology Program (PEBC), Bellvitge Institute ofBiomedical Investigation, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Camprubí
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Monk
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015551:Autoimmunity; D003922:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1 / Q000235:genetics; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D018392:Genomic Imprinting; D006657:Histones / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D006657:Histones