Disruption of imprinted expression of U2afbp-rs/U2af1-rs1 gene in mouse parthenogenetic fetuses

The present study shows that the U2afbp-rs gene, a paternally expressed imp rinted gene, is activated and expressed in a biallelic manner from maternal alleles in parthenogenetic mouse fetuses on day 9.5 of gestation. The mean expression was detected to be 88% (31-134%) of that in control biparental fetuses, using real-time quantitative reverse transcription and polymerase chain reaction. This disrupted expression of the gene was associated with c hanges in the chromatin structure but not with the methylation pattern in t he regulation region. The present results show that parental specific expre ssion of imprinted genes is not always maintained in uniparental embryos. T his suggests that both parental genomes are necessary to establish parental specific expression of the U2afbp-rs gene.