Abstract
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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 5618 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 28 Sep 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We acknowledge funding from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO): Biobanking and Biomolecular Research Infrastructure (BBMRI–NL, 184.021.007; 184.033.111), and NWO Large Scale infrastructures, X-Omics (184.034.019). Cohort-specific acknowledgments are provided in Supplementary Note 8. We thank Peter Visscher and Jian Yang for their helpful comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).