Epigenetic inheritance and plant evolution

Abstract

Being sessile organisms, plants show a high degree of developmental plasticity to cope with a constantly changing environment. While plasticity in plants is largely controlled genetically, recent studies have demonstrated the importance of epigenetic mechanisms, especially DNA methylation, for gene regulation and phenotypic plasticity in response to internal and external stimuli. Induced epigenetic changes can be a source of phenotypic variations in natural plant populations that can be inherited by progeny for multiple generations. Whether epigenetic phenotypic changes are advantageous in a given environment, and whether they are subject to natural selection is of great interest, and their roles in adaptation and evolution are an area of active research in plant ecology. This review is focused on the role of heritable epigenetic variation induced by environmental changes, and its potential influence on adaptation and evolution in plants.

Phenotypic Responses, Reproduction Mode and Epigenetic Patterns under Temperature Treatments in the Alpine Plant Species Ranunculus kuepferi (Ranunculaceae)

“…This ability could give an advantage to an organism to colonize freshly available ecological niches. Under this process, the evolution of several adaptive traits could be expected, in favor of a successful establishment to the new niche [ 85 , 90 , 91 ]. Moreover, cytotypes with low genetic divergence [ 61 , 64 ] rely on phenotypic variation to manage to colonize different environments [ 92 ].…”

Looking At the Past and Heading to the Future: Meeting Summary of the 6th European Workshop on Plant Chromatin 2019 in Cologne, Germany

“…Recent advances in our understanding of inter-generational inheritance of epigenetic and chromatin marks have revealed a variety of plant peculiarities, rendering this topic an exciting field of study with impact on our fundamental understanding of inheritance, phenotypic plasticity, population dynamics, and evolution (Köhler and Springer, 2017;Miryeganeh and Saze, 2019). Nevertheless, many open questions remain concerning what epigenetic information is inherited, the mechanisms of inheritance, and the processes involved in eventual reprogramming to prevent inheritance.…”

Population Ecology 2020 editorial

“…In this issue, we provide a special feature “Epigenetic inheritance and a paradigm shift in evolutionary ecology (organized by Kenji Matsuura)” including three papers (Iwasa, ; Matsuura, ; Miryeganeh & Saze, ). This special feature is a spin‐off from the symposium “The era of genome imprinting: epigenetic inheritance and a paradigm shift in evolutionary ecology” at the annual meeting of the Society of Population Ecology in 2017.…”