{"id":222577,"date":"2025-09-27T08:29:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T13:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/when-mom-and-dads-dna-dont-match-up-the-embryo-finds-a-way"},"modified":"2025-09-27T08:29:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T13:29:23","slug":"when-mom-and-dads-dna-dont-match-up-the-embryo-finds-a-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/when-mom-and-dads-dna-dont-match-up-the-embryo-finds-a-way","title":{"rendered":"When mom and dad\u2019s DNA don\u2019t match up, the embryo finds a way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/when-mom-and-dads-dna-dont-match-up-the-embryo-finds-a-way2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When a sperm meets an egg, a lot has to go right for an embryo to develop into a complete organism. One critical step of early development is the reorganization of parental DNA to form a new unified genome, before the embryo can undergo its first cell division.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have long known that sperm and eggs bundle their DNA differently. But it\u2019s been assumed that their centromeres\u2014the special regions of each chromosome that act like handles to pull DNA apart during <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/cell+division\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cell division <\/a>\u2014were essentially the same. That assumption rested on the presence of <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/centromere\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">centromere<\/a> protein A, or CENPA, a unique histone protein that marks centromeres and preserves their identity across each cell division and across generations.<\/p>\n<p>Because CENPA acts like a molecular tag, preserving these sites as \u201cdo not erase\u201d regions of the genome, the centromeres were thought to be functionally indistinguishable between maternal and <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/paternal+chromosomes\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">paternal chromosomes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a sperm meets an egg, a lot has to go right for an embryo to develop into a complete organism. One critical step of early development is the reorganization of parental DNA to form a new unified genome, before the embryo can undergo its first cell division. Scientists have long known that sperm and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}