McEachern Lori A
Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 4R2.
Genet Res Int. 2012;2012:689819. doi: 10.1155/2012/689819. Epub 2012 Mar 27.
Non-model organisms are generally more difficult and/or time consuming to work with than model organisms. In addition, epigenetic analysis of model organisms is facilitated by well-established protocols, and commercially-available reagents and kits that may not be available for, or previously tested on, non-model organisms. Given the evolutionary conservation and widespread nature of many epigenetic mechanisms, a powerful method to analyze epigenetic phenomena from non-model organisms would be to use transgenic model organisms containing an epigenetic region of interest from the non-model. Interestingly, while transgenic Drosophila and mice have provided significant insight into the molecular mechanisms and evolutionary conservation of the epigenetic processes that target epigenetic control regions in other model organisms, this method has so far been under-exploited for non-model organism epigenetic analysis. This paper details several experiments that have examined the epigenetic processes of genomic imprinting and paramutation, by transferring an epigenetic control region from one model organism to another. These cross-species experiments demonstrate that valuable insight into both the molecular mechanisms and evolutionary conservation of epigenetic processes may be obtained via transgenic experiments, which can then be used to guide further investigations and experiments in the species of interest.
与模式生物相比，非模式生物通常更难操作且/或耗时更长。此外，模式生物的表观遗传分析因成熟的实验方案以及商业化试剂和试剂盒而变得更加便利，而这些对于非模式生物可能并不适用或未曾经过测试。鉴于许多表观遗传机制具有进化保守性和广泛存在的特性，一种分析非模式生物表观遗传现象的有效方法是使用含有来自非模式生物感兴趣的表观遗传区域的转基因模式生物。有趣的是，虽然转基因果蝇和小鼠为其他模式生物中靶向表观遗传控制区域的表观遗传过程的分子机制和进化保守性提供了重要见解，但到目前为止，这种方法在非模式生物表观遗传分析中尚未得到充分利用。本文详细介绍了几项实验，这些实验通过将表观遗传控制区域从一种模式生物转移到另一种模式生物来研究基因组印记和副突变的表观遗传过程。这些跨物种实验表明，通过转基因实验可以获得有关表观遗传过程的分子机制和进化保守性的有价值见解，进而可用于指导对感兴趣物种的进一步研究和实验。
