Role of the imprinted allele of the Cdkn1c gene in mouse neocortical development.

Yui Imaizumi, Shohei Furutachi, Tomoyuki Watanabe, Hiroaki Miya, Daichi Kawaguchi, Yukiko Gotoh

Scientific reports 2020 Feb 05

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Imprinted genes are expressed from only one allele in a parent of origin-specific manner. The cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p57kip2 is encoded by an imprinted gene Cdkn1c, with the paternal allele being silenced. The possible expression and function of the paternal allele of Cdkn1c have remained little studied, however. We now show that the paternal allele of the Cdkn1c gene is expressed at a low level in the developing mouse neocortex. Surprisingly, the central nervous system-specific conditional deletion of the paternal allele (pat cKO) at the Cdkn1c locus resulted in a marked reduction in brain size. Furthermore, pat cKO gradually reduced the number of neural stem-progenitor cells (NPCs) during neocortical development, and thus reduced the number of upper-layer neurons, which were derived from late-stage NPCs. Our results thus show that the paternal allele of the Cdkn1c locus plays a key role in maintenance of NPCs during neocortical development.

Citation

Yui Imaizumi, Shohei Furutachi, Tomoyuki Watanabe, Hiroaki Miya, Daichi Kawaguchi, Yukiko Gotoh. Role of the imprinted allele of the Cdkn1c gene in mouse neocortical development. Scientific reports. 2020 Feb 05;10(1):1884