“How Close We Are to a Complete List of Imprinted Genes” by Morpheus
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This post summarizes some of the research I have been doing for Bootstrap Bio AKA kman and Genesmith

** TL;DR**

• We currently don’t have a list of all imprinted genes that are important in human development, but further long-read sequencing in adults and in the human placenta is going to get us close to that goal.

• Measuring DNA methylation in a low input DNA context is really annoying, because usually we can’t amplify methylated DNA. I explore the only way that appears tractable to me to amplify methylated DNA anyway. This could be useful for building an atlas of early embryo development and for epigenetic preimplantation embryo screening.

• Correct imprinting seems particularly achievable in Hulk sperm

** Epigenetics and imprinting**

This post assumes basic familiarity with epigenetics. The next paragraph is a 1-paragraph summary, but I recommend reading these two excellent posts on [...]

Outline:

(00:17) TL;DR

(00:56) Epigenetics and imprinting

(02:20) Why we need to know all imprinting regions and genes

(04:48) How imprinted genes work and how we measure them

(07:43) Have we identified all imprinted genes?

(12:39) Fixing paternal imprinting might be easier than fixing maternal imprinting

(13:15) PCR for methylated DNA

(17:11) Thoughts on the role of RNA in imprinting

(18:47) Some useful datasets and resources if someone else wants to look further into imprinting and epigenetics in the future

(20:57) References

The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

First published: April 19th, 2025

Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FX978FWaNQXeyat9S/how-close-we-are-to-a-complete-list-of-imprinted-genes)

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO).

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