GENE INTERACTIONS FROM MATERNAL EFFECTS

Maternal Effects in Insect-Plant Interactions:

Maternal effects occur when the phenotype or environment of a mother affects the phenotype of her offspring via some mechanism other than the transmission of genes. The primary objective of this review is to use examples from my own research on the interaction between seed beetles and their host plants to illustrate how maternal effects influence ecological interactions in nature. I explain how...

Pregnancy-specific glycoproteins: complex gene families regulating maternal-fetal interactions.

The pregnancy-specific glycoproteins (PSGs) are the most abundant trophoblastic proteins in maternal blood during human pregnancy and they appear to be exclusive to species with hemochorial placentation. There are ten protein-coding human PSG genes (PSG1 - PSG9, PSG11) and also multiple PSG genes in non-human primates, rodents and bats. Several studies indicate that PSGs have immunoregulatory, ...

Maternal and zygotic sex-specific gene interactions in Drosophila melanogaster.

Sex-lethal (Sxl) is a vital, X-chromosome gene involved in Drosophila sex determination. The most striking aspect of the phenotype of daughterless (da), an autosomal maternal-effect mutation, may be explained by effects on the functioning of the Sxl gene in the zygote. In this paper, new aspects of interactions between various combinations of Sxl and da alleles are explored in order to understa...

Maternal-Fetal Thyroid Interactions

Investigation of Maternal Effects, Maternal-Fetal Interactions and Parent-of-Origin Effects (Imprinting), Using Mothers and Their Offspring

Many complex genetic effects, including epigenetic effects, may be expected to operate via mechanisms in the inter-uterine environment. A popular design for the investigation of such effects, including effects of parent-of-origin (imprinting), maternal genotype, and maternal-fetal genotype interactions, is to collect DNA from affected offspring and their mothers (case/mother duos) and to compar...