Epidermis specific epigenetic modifications in the Arabidopsis thaliana root under salt stress conditions

BEYRNE, CECILIA CARMEN; GONZÁLEZ, RODRIGO MATÍAS; IUSEM, NORBERTO DANIEL

Paraná, Entre Ríos

Congreso; LIV Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2018

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular

Epigenetic modifications are changes in DNA or in the associated chromatin that do not imply changes in their sequence. These modificationsare reversible and sometimes inheritable.The plant root epidermis develops root hairs, which are responsible for the uptake of water and nutrientsfrom the soil. The Glabra2 gene is involved in epidermal cell differentiation: trichoblasts, which will originate root hairs and the atrichoblasts,which will not.In the present work, specific primers for the amplification of a portion of the Gl2 gene after bisulfite DNA treatment weredesigned. These primers were able to specifically amplify DNA molecules from epidermal cells. Under 20 mMNaCl saline stress conditions,there is a marked decrease in CG methylation, only when the DNA of epidermal cells is analyzed. This epidermal specific effect is lost when thestress conditions are more severe (75 mMNaCl). In this case, the decrease in CG methylation were noticed even when primers that amplify DNAof all root cell types are used.Another finding was that plants daughters of plants that had undergone salt stress (but had not suffered itthemselves) had similar level of CG methylation as their parents when considering the epidermis exclusively, which shows that thesemodifications are heritable.These results show that environmental changes can produce epigenetic variations in specific cell types, in this casethe epidermis, which is the outermost cell layer of the root in direct contact with the soil. This influences the production of root hairs, accordingto the saline concentration of the medium.