本校近期卓越研究成果： Nature Genetics 41, 240 - 245 (2009)
Published online: 18 January 2009 | doi:10.1038/ng.286               

  系生所 -王孫崇老師

"DNA methylation profiles in monozygotic and dizygotic twins"
 (Nature Genetics, 1/18/2009)

Zachary A Kaminsky, Thomas Tang, Sun-Chong Wang, Carolyn Ptak, Gabriel H T Oh, Albert H C Wong, Laura A Feldcamp, Carl Virtanen, Jonas Halfvarson, Curt Tysk, Allan F McRae, Peter M Visscher, Grant W Montgomery, Irving I Gottesman, Nicholas G Martin & Art Petronis

 Twin studies have provided the basis for genetic and epidemiological studies in human complex traits. As epigenetic factors can contribute to phenotypic outcomes, we conducted a DNA methylation analysis in white blood cells (WBC), buccal epithelial cells and gut biopsies of 114    monozygotic (MZ) twins as well as WBC and buccal epithelial cells of 80 dizygotic (DZ) twins using 12K CpG island microarrays. Here we provide the first annotation of epigenetic metastability of 6,000 unique genomic regions in MZ twins. An intraclass correlation (ICC)-based comparison of matched MZ and DZ twins showed significantly higher epigenetic difference in buccal cells of DZ co-twins (P = 1.2 10^-294). Although such higher epigenetic discordance in DZ twins can result from DNA sequence differences, our in silico SNP analyses and animal studies favor the hypothesis that it is due to epigenomic differences in the zygotes, suggesting that molecular mechanisms of heritability may not be limited to DNA sequence differences.