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Identical twins carry a persistent epigenetic signature of early genome programming.

Jenny Van DongenScott D GordonAllan F McRaeVeronika V OdintsovaHamdi MbarekCharles E BreezeKaren SugdenSara LundgrenJuan E Castillo-FernandezEilis J HannonTerrie E MoffittFiona A HagenbeekCatharina E M van BeijsterveldtJouke- Jan HottengaPei-Chien Tsainull nullnull nullJosine L MinGibran HemaniErik A EhliFranziska PaulClaudio D SternBastiaan T HeijmansPieternella Eline SlagboomLucia DaxingerSilvère M van der MaarelEco J C N de GeusGonneke WillemsenGrant W MontgomeryBruno ReversadeMiina OllikainenJaakko A KaprioTimothy D SpectorJordana T BellJonathan S MillAvshalom CaspiNicholas G MartinDorret I Boomsma
Published in: Nature communications (2021)
Monozygotic (MZ) twins and higher-order multiples arise when a zygote splits during pre-implantation stages of development. The mechanisms underpinning this event have remained a mystery. Because MZ twinning rarely runs in families, the leading hypothesis is that it occurs at random. Here, we show that MZ twinning is strongly associated with a stable DNA methylation signature in adult somatic tissues. This signature spans regions near telomeres and centromeres, Polycomb-repressed regions and heterochromatin, genes involved in cell-adhesion, WNT signaling, cell fate, and putative human metastable epialleles. Our study also demonstrates a never-anticipated corollary: because identical twins keep a lifelong molecular signature, we can retrospectively diagnose if a person was conceived as monozygotic twin.
Keyphrases
  • dna methylation
  • cell adhesion
  • gene expression
  • cell fate
  • genome wide
  • gestational age
  • endothelial cells
  • copy number
  • single molecule
  • pluripotent stem cells
  • preterm birth