Chapter 12 - Plant models of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance

Abstract

Plants offer illustrative examples of the inheritance of epigenetic modifications. Indeed, due to their sessile lifestyle, they seem to be more prone to transfer epigenetic modifications to the next generation than mammals. Like other eukaryotic organisms, plants have different layers of epigenetic regulation whose main role is to control the expression of transposable elements and, occasionally, genes. Epigenetics adds plasticity to gene expression allowing their regulation without altering their DNA sequence. The epigenetic status of some of those genes can be influenced by environmental conditions, and, in some cases, this epigenetic status might be inherited to the next generation. Because plants set aside their reproductive cells late during their development, transgenerational epigenetic inheritance may serve as a memory of the environmental conditions to which plants were exposed in previous generations. In this chapter, we review the known examples of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in plants and the molecular mechanisms that might control them.