The “Imprinting and Beyond: Monoallelic expression in Health and Disease” conference, hosted by David Monk (PEBC-IDIBELL) and Robert Feil (CNRS-Montpellier, France) was held on the 21st-23rd September at Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

This conference, sponsored by EMBO, The Company of Biologists, Genoma España and the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MICINN) brought together over 100 world experts working in the field of epigenetics from as far afield as Japan, Australia and USA, resulting in interactive discussions, and uniting people to discuss the future directions of this highly active research area.

Meeting highlights included the EMBO plenary lecture by Howard Cedar on allelic choice, as well as presentations by Edith Heard on X-chromosome inactivation, Ben Tycko on SNP-mediated DNA methylation, Wolf Reik on the role of imprinted miRNAs in development and Gavin Kelsey on imprint establishment in the germline.

The genomic imprinting is a phenomenon by which certain genes are expressed or not depending on whether you come from the father or mother. At birth each of us inherits two copies (alleles) of each gene, one copy of the mother and one father. Most of these copies are functional for most of the genes but in some cases, due to epigenetic changes (chemical changes in DNA), a copy is silenced while the other is functional.

The genomic imprinting is a phenomenon by which certain genes are expressed or not depending on whether you come from the father or mother. At birth each of us inherits two copies (alleles) of each gene, one copy of the mother and one father. Most of these copies are functional for most of the genes but in some cases, due to epigenetic changes (chemical changes in DNA), a copy is silenced while the other is functional.

Imprinted genes may be related to tumor development and can cause various diseases such as the Angelman Syndrome or the Prader-Willi Syndrome, both of them linked to chromosome 15