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Transmission héréditaire de l’information épigénétique par le gamète mâle

Inheritance of epigenetic information through the male gamete

Basic and Clinical Andrology volume 19, pages 140–147 (2009)Cite this article

Résumé

Comment est déterminé un phénotype ? Historiquement, on pensait que ce dernier résultait de l’information génétique reçue par les parents. Mais de nombreuses études ont révélé l’existence de modifications épigénétiques qui ne sont pas portées sur la séquence nucléotidique d’un gène, mais dont la présence est indispensable à l’expression normale d’un gène. Point important, ces modifications épigénétiques peuvent être héritées par les enfants, indiquant clairement que le gamète femelle mais aussi le gamète mâle contiennent des informations épigénétiques transmissibles à la descendance.

Abstract

What determines phenotype is one of the most fundamental questions in biology. Historically, most studies have focused on genetics but more recent studies have revealed the existence of epigenetic modifications that are not based on DNA sequencing but are essential for appropriate gene expression. Importantly, these epigenetic modifications can be inherited by the offspring. Thus, both male and female gametes contain inherited epigenetic information.

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  1. Inserm U636, Université de Nice, parc Valrose, F-06100, Nice, France

    V. Grandjean

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  1. V. Grandjean
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Correspondence to V. Grandjean.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Grandjean, V. Transmission héréditaire de l’information épigénétique par le gamète mâle. Basic Clin. Androl. 19, 140–147 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12610-009-0022-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12610-009-0022-2

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Basic and Clinical Andrology

ISSN: 2051-4190