RESEARCH ARTICLE Allele and dosage specificity of the Peg3 imprinted domain Corey L. Bretz, Wesley D. Frey, Ryoichi Teruyama, Joomyeong Kim* Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, United States of America *
[email protected] Abstract a1111111111 The biological impetus for gene dosage and allele specificity of mammalian imprinted genes a1111111111 a1111111111 is not fully understood. To address this, we generated and analyzed four sets of mice from a1111111111 a single breeding scheme with varying allelic expression and gene dosage of the Peg3 a1111111111 domain. The mutants with abrogation of the two paternally expressed genes, Peg3 and Usp29, showed a significant decrease in growth rates for both males and females, while the mutants with biallelic expression of Peg3 and Usp29 resulted in an increased growth rate of female mice only. The mutant cohort with biallelic expression of Peg3 and Usp29 tended to OPEN ACCESS have greater numbers of pups compared to the other genotypes. The mutants with switched Citation: Bretz CL, Frey WD, Teruyama R, Kim J active alleles displayed overall similar phenotypes to the wild type, but did show some differ- (2018) Allele and dosage specificity of the Peg3 ences in gene expression, suggesting potential non-redundant roles contributed by the imprinted domain. PLoS ONE 13(5): e0197069. maternal and paternal alleles. Overall, this study demonstrates a novel in vivo approach to https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197069 investigate the allele and dosage specificity of mammalian imprinted domains. Editor: Keith William Brown, University of Bristol, UNITED KINGDOM Received: March 16, 2018 Accepted: April 25, 2018 Introduction Published: May 7, 2018 In placental mammals, the majority of autosomal genes have two functional copies, which are Copyright: © 2018 Bretz et al.