Maintaining Epigenetic Inheritance During DNA Replication in Plants

FRANCISCO M. IGLESIAS; CERDAN, PABLO

Frontiers in plant science

Frontiers

Lugar: Lausanne; Año: 2016 vol. 7 p. 1 - 8

Plants are exposed to different stresses throughout their life cycles. A myriad of studies have shown that stress episodes, such as cold, heat and drought, lead to transcriptional reprogramming of gene expression patterns and phenotypic changes. This reprogramming can be more or less ?memorized?, enabling plants to aid responses when these events recur, and can be maintained for short as well as for long periods of time. The former depends on the half-life of stress-induced proteins, RNAs and metabolites, whereas the latter depends on epigenetic processes. Epigenetic inheritance of changes in gene function means that they: i) are mitotically and/or meiotically heritable; ii) cannot be explained by changes in the DNA sequence; and iii) are maintained without the influence of the initial stimulus. Memory occurs by multiple mechanisms, but seems to require chromatin changes, such as DNA methylation, histone modifications and short/long non-coding RNAs. However, whether these chromatin modifications are truly epigenetic remain controversial. In this mini-review, we discuss recent evidence relating the coupling of epigenetic inheritance with DNA replication processes in plants. On the other hand, how the replication of DNA is influenced by the chromatin landscape has been recently reviewed (Sequeira-Mendes and Gutierrez, 2015).