Polymorphic functional imprinting of the human IGF2 gene among individuals, in blood cells, is associated with H19 expression

In most non-neoplastic tissues studied to date, IGF2 is expressed only from the paternal allele and H19 is expressed only from the maternal allele. The choroid plexus, the only normal tissue to date where IGF2 is expressed from both parental alleles, does not express H19. We present an additional situation in which biallelic IGF2 expression is associated with the absence of H19 transcription in normal tissue: blood cells. In blood cells, functional IGF2 imprinting was found to be a polymorphic trait among individuals: expression was biallelic in 79 out of 85 individuals, but the remaining 6 expressed a single allele. Only the latter expressed H19. Finally, the familial clustering of functional IGF2 imprinting in blood cells suggests that the trait may be genotype-dependent. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.