Jian-Kang Zhu
Xiaofeng Cao
aShanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology and Center of Excellence for Molecular Plant Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China
bDepartment of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
cState Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics and National Center for Plant Gene Research, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
More InformationCorresponding author: E-mail address: cgduan@sibs.ac.cn (Cheng-Guo Duan);E-mail address: jkzhu@sibs.ac.cn (Jian-Kang Zhu);E-mail address: xfcao@genetics.ac.cn (Xiaofeng Cao)
Received Date: 2018-08-15
Accepted Date:2018-09-30
Rev Recd Date:2018-09-25
Available Online: 2018-11-06 Publish Date:2018-11-20
Abstract
Abstract
Epigenetics refers to the study of heritable changes in gene function that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence. Such effects on cellular and physiological phenotypic traits may result from external or environmental factors or be part of normal developmental program. In eukaryotes, DNA wraps on a histone octamer (two copies of H2A, H2B, H3 and H4) to form nucleosome, the fundamental unit of chromatin. The structure of chromatin is subjected to a dynamic regulation through multiple epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation, histone posttranslational modifications (PTMs), chromatin remodeling and noncoding RNAs. As conserved regulatory mechanisms in gene expression, epigenetic mechanisms participate in almost all the important biological processes ranging from basal development to environmental response. Importantly, all of the major epigenetic mechanisms in mammalians also occur in plants. Plant studies have provided numerous important contributions to the epigenetic research. For example, gene imprinting, a mechanism of parental allele-specific gene expression, was firstly observed in maize; evidence of paramutation, an epigenetic phenomenon that one allele acts in a single locus to induce a heritable change in the other allele, was firstly reported in maize and tomato. Moreover, some unique epigenetic mechanisms have been evolved in plants. For example, the 24-nt siRNA-involved RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) pathway is plant-specific because of the involvements of two plant-specific DNA-dependent RNA polymerases, Pol IV and Pol V. A thorough study of epigenetic mechanisms is of great significance to improve crop agronomic traits and environmental adaptability. In this review, we make a brief summary of important progress achieved in plant epigenetics field in China over the past several decades and give a brief outlook on future research prospects. We focus our review on DNA methylation and histone PTMs, the two most important aspects of epigenetic mechanisms.Keywords: Plant epigenetics,
DNA methylation,
Histone modifications,
Chromatin remodeling
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