Along the Bos Taurus genome, uncover candidate Imprinting Control Regions

In mammals, Imprinting Control Regions (ICRs) regulate a subset of genes in a parent-of-origin-specific manner. In both human and mouse, previous studies identified a set of CpG-rich motifs that occurred as clusters in ICRs and germline Differentially Methylated Regions (gDMRs). These motifs consist of the ZFP57 binding site (ZFBS) overlapping a subset of MLL binding units known as MLL morphemes. Furthermore, by creating plots for displaying the density of these overlaps, it became possible to locate known and candidate ICRs in mouse and human genomic DNA. Since genomic imprinting impacts many developmental and key physiological processes, we performed genome-wide analyses to create plots displaying the density of the CpG-rich motifs (ZFBS-morph overlaps) along Bos Taurus chromosomal DNA. We tailored our datasets so that they could be displayed on the UCSC genome browser (the build bosTau8). On the genome browser, we could view the ZFP57 binding sites, the ZFBS-morph overlaps, and peaks in the density-plots in the context of cattle RefSeq Genes, Non-Cow RefSeq Genes, CpG islands, and Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Our datasets revealed the correspondence of peaks in plots to known and deduced ICRs in Bos Taurus genomic DNA. We illustrate that by uploading our datasets onto the UCSC genome browser, we could discover candidate ICRs in cattle DNA. In enlarged views, we could pinpoint the genes in the vicinity of candidate ICRs and thus discover potential imprinted genes.