EVOLUTION OF GENOMIC IMPRINTING: WHY ARE SO FEW GENES IMPRINTED?

摘要

For some genes of mammalian embryos, the paternally derived allele and the maternally derived allele are expressed differently: this phenomenon is called genomic imprinting. Many of them are genes controlling the amount of resource-supply by the mother. We here study the evolution of genomic imprinting based on multi-variate quantitative genetic models to examine the feasibility of genetic conflict hypothesis that explains the observed patterns as an evolutionary outcome of natural selection workingdifferentially between the paternal and maternal alleles.