期刊
BRIEFINGS IN FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS
卷 13, 期 3, 页码 235-245出版社
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/bfgp/elt056
关键词
ants; epigenetics; chromatin; polyphenism; DNA methylation; histone modifications
资金
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute Collaborative Innovation Award
- Helen Hay Whitney Foundation
- Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Center for Stem Cell Biology
Ants and other social insects offer a natural experimental system to investigate the molecular bases of epigenetic processes that influence the whole organism. Epigenetics is defined as the inheritance of biological variation independent of changes in the DNA sequence. As such, epigenetic research focuses on the mechanisms by which multiple phenotypes arise from a single genome. In social insects, whole individuals belong to alternative phenotypic classes (known as castes) that vary in morphology, behavior, reproductive biology and longevity. It has been proposed that the same epigenetic pathways that maintain different cell identities in vertebrates might determine the different phenotypes observed in social insects. Here, I review the current progress on investigating the role of classic epigenetic signals, such as DNA methylation and histone posttranslational modification, in the relatively unexplored paradigm of ant polyphenism.
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