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Identical twins carry a persistent epigenetic signature of early genome programming

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van Dongen, Jenny
Gordon, Scott D.
McRae, Allan F.
Odintsova, Veronika V.
Mbarek, Hamdi
Breeze, Charles
Sugden, Karen
Lundgren, Sara
Castillo-Fernandez, Juan E.
Hannon, Eilis

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English

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The mechanisms underlying how monozygotic (or identical) twins arise are yet to be determined. Here, the authors investigate this in an epigenome-wide association study, showing that monozygotic twinning has a characteristic DNA methylation signature in adult somatic tissues. Monozygotic (MZ) twins and higher-order multiples arise when a zygote splits during pre-implantation stages of development. The mechanisms underpinning this event have remained a mystery. Because MZ twinning rarely runs in families, the leading hypothesis is that it occurs at random. Here, we show that MZ twinning is strongly associated with a stable DNA methylation signature in adult somatic tissues. This signature spans regions near telomeres and centromeres, Polycomb-repressed regions and heterochromatin, genes involved in cell-adhesion, WNT signaling, cell fate, and putative human metastable epialleles. Our study also demonstrates a never-anticipated corollary: because identical twins keep a lifelong molecular signature, we can retrospectively diagnose if a person was conceived as monozygotic twin.

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Nature Communications

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Nature Portfolio

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Science and technology

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