Epigenetic responses of hare barley (Hordeum murinum subsp. leporinum) to climate change: an experimental, trait-based approach

Abstract

The impact of reduced rainfall and increased temperatures forecasted by climate change models on plant communities will depend on the capacity of plant species to acclimate and adapt to new environmental conditions. The acclimation process is mainly driven by epigenetic regulation, including structural and chemical modifications on the genome that do not affect the nucleotide sequence. In plants, one of the best-known epigenetic mechanisms is cytosine-methylation. We evaluated the impact of 30% reduced rainfall (hereafter “drought” treatment; D), 3 °C increased air temperature (“warming”; W), and the combination of D and W (WD) on the phenotypic and epigenetic variability of Hordeum murinum subsp. leporinum L., a grass species of high relevance in Mediterranean agroforestry systems. A full factorial experiment was set up in a savannah-like ecosystem located in southwestern Spain. H. murinum exhibited a large phenotypic plasticity in response to climatic conditions. Plants subjected to warmer conditions (i.e., W and WD treatments) flowered earlier, and those subjected to combined stress (WD) showed a higher investment in leaf area per unit of leaf mass (i.e., higher SLA) and produced heavier seeds. Our results also indicated that both the level and patterns of methylation varied substantially with the climatic treatments, with the combination of D and W inducing a clearly different epigenetic response compared to that promoted by D and W separately. The main conclusion achieved in this work suggests a potential role of epigenetic regulation of gene expression for the maintenance of homoeostasis and functional stability under future climate change scenarios.

DNA Methylation Can Mediate Local Adaptation and Response to Climate Change in the Clonal Plant Fragaria vesca: Evidence From a European-Scale Reciprocal Transplant Experiment

“…Climatic changes affect epigenetic variation in many organisms, which might help them adapt to rapid climatic changes (e.g., Gugger et al, 2016 ; Chano et al, 2021 ; reviewed in Thiebaut et al, 2019 ). In our study, however, experimental alteration of DNA methylation had inconsistent effects on the plant response to climate change in the three countries.…”

Ecological significance of intraplant variation: Epigenetic mosaicism in Lavandula latifolia plants predicts extant and transgenerational variability of fecundity‐related traits

“…Associations between epigenotypes and phenotypes across individuals, populations or species have been frequently documented in recent years for model and non‐model plants, either in the wild or under experimental conditions (e.g. Amoah et al, 2012; Chano et al, 2021; Foust et al, 2016; Medrano et al, 2014; Paun et al, 2010; Róis et al, 2013; Wang et al, 2020; Wilschut et al, 2016). In contrast, similar epigenotype–phenotype associations across different homologous parts of the same plant individual remain basically unreported, and the few documented instances refer to discrete phenotypic variation in leaves or flowers (Bitonti et al, 1996; Herrera & Bazaga, 2013; Marfil et al, 2009; but see Alonso et al, 2018; Bian et al, 2013).…”

Transgenerational Responses to Climate Change in Mediterranean Annual Species with Contrasting Functional Strategies

“…Transgenerational epigenetics have been specially studied in the Arabidopsis model and some crop species (Hauser et al, 2011;Quadrana and Colot, 2016) but, to our knowledge, no studies linking its prevalence with different functional types of plants have been conducted. Further analysis including hormones quantification (Vu et al, 2015) or cytosine-methylation (Chano et al, 2021) would allow to better understand the underlying mechanisms that explain these opposite persistent maternal effects in species with contrasting functional strategies.…”