Parent of Origin Effects: Maternal Effects and Genomic Imprinting

We have maintained a long-standing interest in the role that the maternal environment plays in the development of offspring characteristics. An especially interesting aspect of this maternal environment is that while it may be environmental in relation to the developing offspring, genetic variations may occur between mothers that affect the environment they provide for their offspring. These genetic maternal effects can have long-standing effects on progeny phenotype, long after the physical association between mother and offspring is broken. The evolutionary consequences of maternal effects can be severe, leading to such unusual expectations as negative response to positive selection. These maternal effects models can also serve as models for more general kin effects, where a wide variety of relatives may provide genetically-variable environments that impact individual development. This leads to a common model for evolution due to kin and group selection.

We are investigating the genetic basis of both prenatal and postnatal maternal effects, including their direct and epistatic effects and the effects of maternal-offspring genetic interaction on offspring traits.

e are also examining the effects of genomic imprinting on growth and obesity. In genomic imprinting, the phenotypic differences between reciprocal heterozygotes (Aa and aA where the first allele is inherited from the father and second from the mother) are significant because the expression of these genes utilizes different combinations of the alleles inherited from the father and mother. Genomic imprinting has been thought to be special and rare. However, we have mapped a number of genomic imprinting effects for growth, obesity, and body composition. We have also developed an approach that can identify the source of parent-of-origin effects as due to maternal effects versus genomic imprinting. We will be following up these mapped effects in later generations of the LG/J by SM/J intercross and hoping to identify the imprinted genes responsible for these effects.

Collaborators

Dr. Jason Wolf, University of Manchester

Dr. Andrea Peripato, Federal University of Sao Carlos

Publications on the Topic

Cheverud, J. M., R. Hager, C. C. Roseman, G. L. Fawcett, B. Wang, J. B. Wolf. 2008. Genomic imprinting effects on adult body composition in mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105: 4253-4258.

Cheverud, J. M. and J. B. Wolf. 2008. Genetics and evolutionary consequences of maternal effects. In: Maternal Effects in Mammals, D. Maestripieri and J. M. Mateo (eds.), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, (in press).

Wolf, J. B., J. M. Cheverud, C. C. Roseman and R. Hager. 2008. Genome-wide analysis reveals a complex pattern of genomic imprinting in mice. PLoS Genetics 4(6): e1000091.

Hager, R., J. M. Cheverud, J.B. Wolf. 2008. Maternal effects as the cause of parent-of-origin effects that mimic genomic imprinting. Genetics 178: 1755-1762.

Cui, Y., J. M. Cheverud and R. Wu. 2007. A statistical model for dissecting genomic imprinting through genetic mapping. Genetica 130: 227-239.

Cui, Y., Q. Lu, J. M. Cheverud, R. C. Littell, and R. Wu 2006. Model for mapping imprinted quantitative trait loci in an inbred F 2 design. Genomics 87: 543-551.

Jarvis , J. P., J. P. Kenney-Hunt, T. H. Ehrich, L. S. Pletscher, C. F. Semenkovich and J. M. Cheverud. 2005. Maternal genotype affects adult offspring lipid, obesity, and diabetes phenotypes in LGXSM recombinant inbred strains. Journal of Lipid Research, 46: 1692-1702.

Cheverud, J. 2003. Evolution in a genetically heritable social environment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100:4357-4359.

Peripato, A. C., R. A. de Brito, T. T. Vaughn, L. S. Pletscher, S. R. Matioli and J. M. Cheverud 2002. Quantitative trait loci for maternal performance for offspring survival in mice. Genetics 162: 1341-1353.

Wolf, J. B., T. T. Vaughn, L. S. Pletscher and J. M. Cheverud 2002. Contribution of maternal effect QTL to the genetic architecture of early growth in mice. Heredity, 89: 300-310.

Peripato, A. C. and J. M. Cheverud 2002. Genetic influences on maternal care. American Naturalist 160: S173-S185.

Wolf, J. B., E. D. Brodie III, J. M. Cheverud, A. J. Moore and M. J. Wade 1998. Evolutionary consequences of indirect maternal effects. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 13: 64-70.

Cheverud, J. and A. Moore 1994 Quantitative genetics and the role of the environment provided by relatives in behavioral evolution. In: C. Boake (ed.), Quantitative Genetic Studies of Behavioral Evolution. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, pp. 67-100.

Cheverud, J. 1984 Evolution by kin selection: A quantitative genetic model illustrated by maternal performance in mice. Evolution, 38: 766-777.

Bennett, K., J. Cheverud and S. Booth 1981 Deciduous tooth dimensions in fetal rhesus monkeys from mothers with induced diabetes. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 55: 411-418.