McDonald J F, Matzke M A, Matzke A J
Department of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
Cytogenet Genome Res. 2005;110(1-4):242-9. doi: 10.1159/000084958.
Genomic imprinting is the differential expression of maternally and paternally inherited alleles of specific genes. Several organismic level hypotheses have been offered to explain the evolution of genomic imprinting. We argue that evolutionary explanations of the origin of imprinting that focus exclusively on the organismic level are incomplete. We propose that the complex molecular mechanisms that underlie genomic imprinting originally evolved as an adaptive response to the mutagenic potential of transposable elements (TEs). We also present a model of how these mechanisms may have been co-opted by natural selection to evolve molecular features characteristic of genomic imprinting.
基因组印记是特定基因的母本和父本遗传等位基因的差异表达。已经提出了几种生物体水平的假说来解释基因组印记的进化。我们认为，仅关注生物体水平的印记起源的进化解释是不完整的。我们提出，作为对转座元件（TEs）诱变潜力的适应性反应，基因组印记所基于的复杂分子机制最初得以进化。我们还提出了一个模型，说明这些机制可能是如何被自然选择所利用，从而进化出基因组印记所特有的分子特征的。
