摘要
表观遗传学是指不改变DNA序列的可遗传的基因表达改变,是多细胞真核生物的重要生物学现象。DNA甲基化、基因组印记、组蛋白乙酰化、组蛋白甲基化、染色质重塑、假基因和小分子RNA等是表观遗传学的主要研究内容。同卵双生子(monozygotic twins,MZ)是由一个受精卵分裂发育而成的双胞胎,二者具有完全相同的基因组DNA序列。从经典遗传学的角度,使用短串联重复序列(short tandem repeat,STR)和单核苷酸多态性(single nucleotide polymorphism,SNP)等遗传标记均不能对其进行有效的个体甄别。因此,寻找新的遗传标记显得尤为重要,最新表观遗传学领域的研究成果表明,MZ个体间DNA甲基化差异显著,这为甄别MZ个体提供了新的策略。本文对表观遗传学的概念、研究内容及表观遗传学在MZ鉴别中的应用前景进行了综述。
Epigenetic, which refers to heritable differences of genes without changing their DNA sequences, is one of the most important biology phenomena in muhicellular eukaryotes. Its research contents involves DNA methylation, genomic imprinting, histone acetylation, histone methylation, chromatin remodeling, pseudogene, and microRNA etc. Monozygotic twins is developed from one single zygote and are genetically identical in genomic DNA sequence. From the view of classical genetics, traditional genetic markers such as short tandem repeat and single nucleotide polymorphism can not play important role in discriminating monozygotic twins. So it is very essential to find new genetic markers. Recent achievements made in epigenetics show that there exist striking differences in monozygotic twins and provide a new strategy to discriminate the monozygotic twins. In this paper, the concepts, research contents of epigenetics and its application perspective in discriminating monozygotic twins are reviewed.
出处
《法医学杂志》
CAS
CSCD
2009年第3期212-216,共5页
Journal of Forensic Medicine
基金
中央级科研院所社会公益研究资助项目(GY0604)