Researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Biotechnology and the National Maize Improvement Center of China Agricultural University have recently obtained the latest progress in the research of maize genomic imprinting. "(PNAS) magazine. Leading this research is Professor Lai Jinsheng from China Agricultural University. He graduated from China Agricultural University in the early years, and then worked in the Waksman Institute of Rutgers University in the United States. In recent years, some important advances have been made in corn genetic transformation, molecular genetics, comparative genomes, and functional genomes of corn endosperm. Research papers have been published in PNAS, Genome Research, and The Plant Journal. Genomic imprinting, also known as genetic imprinting, is a phenomenon discovered in recent years that does not follow Mendel ’s law and relies on single parents to transmit certain genetic traits. Alleles or chromosomes produce specific processing modifications during development, which leads to different expression activities of alleles derived from two parents in offspring somatic cells. Genes with this phenomenon are called imprinted genes. At present, genomic imprinting is mainly found in a large number of higher organisms, such as flowering plants and placental mammals. Although as early as 40 years ago, scientists discovered the existence of imprinting genes in corn, until now, little is known about the function of corn imprinting genes and their imprinting methods. In this article, the researchers crossed the maize inbred lines Mo17 and B73 in reverse and cross, and analyzed the imprinted genes and imprint expression in the endosperm of the obtained corn hybrids. 179 imprinted genes were identified, accounting for about 1.6% of the protein-coding genes in corn. Among them, 68 specific genes showed dominant expression of maternal alleles, and 111 genes showed dominant expression of paternal alleles. In addition, the researchers also found 38 imprinted long noncoding RNAs (Long noncoding RNAs, lncRNAs). These imprinted non-coding RNAs are all sense or antisense transcripts from protein coding gene introns or intergenic regions. Most of these imprinted genes are distributed in clusters on the genome. By analyzing the allele-specific methylation pattern of imprinted sites in the endosperm of hybrids, 21 differentially methylated regions (DMRs) were identified, which corresponded to the regulation of imprinted genes and imprinted non-coding RNAs, respectively. The analysis showed that all DMRs from the female parent showed hypomethylation and DMRs from the male parent showed hypermethylation. New research shows that there is an extremely extensive and complex genomic imprinting regulation mechanism in corn endosperm, which may play a potential role in maintaining the gene dosage balance of corn endosperm. Guangzhou Ruixin Touch Control Technology Co., Ltd. , https://www.weetaach.com