The establishment of epigenetic marks at metastable epialleles in the mouse

Funded Activity Summary

Occasionally, identical twins are found to have distinctly different characteristics, such as eye colour or severity of genetic disease, that clearly cannot be explained by their genetic makeup, and are unlikely to be the result of environmental differences. In genetically identical mice, similar cases exist, where some mice have a yellow coat and others a brown coat. In instances such as these, a growing body of evidence suggests that certain modifications to genes are responsible. These modifications are not traditional DNA mutations, but are chemical modifications of the basic sequence. Currently, we do not know when these DNA modifications are established during foetal development. We will use the mouse coat colour gene mentioned above to investigate when the different physical characteristics are established in embryonic development. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that critical periods exist in human foetal development where minor environmental or nutritional changes can affect long-term health of the adult. Perhaps the establishment of the DNA modifications are under an environmental or nutritional influence. Further study of when and how the DNA modifications are set-up during embryonic development is necessary in order to understand these events.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2003

End Date: 01-01-2005

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $372,750.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Gene Expression

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

aging | cancer | cytosine methylation | early murine embryogenesis | epigenetic gene silencing | eukaryotic gene expression | fetal origins of adult disease | genetic disease

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