Dynamic readjustment of parental methylation patterns of the 5'-flank of the mouse H19 gene during in vitro organogenesis

Gametic marks are stably propagated in order to manifest parent of origin-specific expression patterns of imprinted genes in the developing conceptus. Although the character of the imprint has not yet been fully elucidated, there is compelling evidence that it involves a methylation mark. This is exemplified by a region upstream of the H19 gene, which is not only methylated in a parent of origin-specific manner, but also regulates the silencing of the maternal Igf2 and paternal H19 alleles, respectively. We show here that the parental-specific methylation patterns within the differentially methylated domain (DMD) are perturbed in the soma during in vitro organogenesis. Under these conditions, the paternal DMD allele becomes partially demethylated, whereas the maternal DMD allele gains methylation. Despite these effects, there were no changes in allelic Igf2 or H19 expression patterns in the embryo. Finally, we show that although TSA derepresses the paternal H19 allele in ectoplacental cone when in vitro developed, there is no discernible effect on the methylation status of the paternally inherited 5'-flank in comparison to control samples. Collectively, this data demonstrates that the parental mark is sensitive to a subset of environmental cues and that a certain degree of plasticity of the gametic mark is tolerated without affecting the manifestation of the imprinted state.