Understanding epigenetic modifications in response to abiotic stresses in plants

Abstract

Abstract Plants have to cope up with environmental stresses during different developmental stages of their life cycle. To overcome the stresses, epigenetic regulations play a significant role in their adaptation. Epigenetic modification has already been well understood. In fact, there are numerous reports related to an epigenetic modification in plants under abiotic stresses. However, there is still a gap in understanding the correlation among different epigenetic phenomena occurring under various abiotic stresses in plants. Therefore, in this review, an attempt has been made to correlate the various epigenetic modifications in the plant under abiotic stresses. Further, recent high-throughput technologies that are being used in the epigenetic analysis have also been highlighted. Various aspects of epigenetic modification in plants have been studied giving emphasis towards abiotic stresses. DNA methylation and histone modification have been focused including the RdDM pathway, ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling, and methylation-sensitive amplified polymorphism (MSAP). With the advancement of technology, various techniques have been applied to detect DNA methylation patterns in plants. These may include bisulfite sequencing, combined bisulfite restriction analysis (COBRA), chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), methylation-sensitive single nucleotide primer extension (Ms-SNuPE), cytosine assay and many more, of which bisulfite genomic sequencing, is the most commonly used. In this report, bisulfite sequencing and chromatin immunoprecipitation were described in detail. Moreover, with the advent of various bioinformatics tools and techniques, epigenetic research has been facilitated, few of which were discussed in this review.