Abstract
The transgenerational inheritance of stress-induced epigenetic modifications is still controversial. Despite several examples of defense “priming” and induced genetic rearrangements, the involvement and persistence of transgenerational epigenetic modifications is not known to be general. Here I argue that non-transmission of epigenetic marks through meiosis may be regarded as an epigenetic modification in itself, and that we should understand the implications for plant evolution in the context of both selection for and selection against transgenerational epigenetic memory. Recent data suggest that both epigenetic inheritance and resetting are mechanistically directed and targeted. Stress-induced epigenetic modifications may buffer against DNA sequence-based evolution to maintain plasticity, or may form part of plasticity’s adaptive potential. To date we have tended to concentrate on the question of whether and for how long epigenetic memory persists. I argue that we should now re-direct our question to investigate the differences between where it persists and where it does not, to understand the higher order evolutionary methods in play and their contribution.
Highlights
Molinier et al (2006) demonstrated that stress-induced epigenetic modification could be inherited through several generations in plants, causing considerable excitement
Experimenters typically repeat experiments with clean seed stocks in controlled conditions and yet reproduce the same epigenetic responses, for example the priming of antibacterial defense (Dowen et al, 2012; Yu et al, 2013). These results suggest that epigenetic priming is targeted
The transitions from spore mother cell to megaspore and gametophyte in the female reproductive lineage are marked by different repressive and permissive histone composition and by chromatin remodeling, suggesting a pre-meiotic epigenetic influence on post-meiotic development. This re-setting during gametogenesis might allow for the removal of epigenetic modifications accumulated in response to stress or growth conditions during development of the parent
Summary
Molinier et al (2006) demonstrated that stress-induced epigenetic modification could be inherited through several generations in plants, causing considerable excitement. We have greater mechanistic understanding of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (e.g., Crevillén et al, 2014; Kuhlmann et al, 2014) there are still few, multi-generational population or species-level studies (Richards, 2006; Bossdorf et al, 2008; Johannes et al, 2008). These few, have allowed us to begin to understand the evolutionary importance of stress-induced epigenetic modifications (Rapp and Wendel, 2005; Bräutigam et al, 2013; Kooke et al, 2015). Arabidopsis epigenetic recombinant inbred line (epiRIL) populations that have no
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