Department of Biological Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
Cell Rep. 2012 May 31;1(5):528-42. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2012.03.012. Epub 2012 Apr 26.
Developing organisms have evolved a wide range of mechanisms for coping with recurrent environmental challenges. How they cope with rare or unforeseen challenges is, however, unclear as are the implications to their unchallenged offspring. Here, we investigate these questions by confronting the development of the fly, D. melanogaster, with artificial tissue distributions of toxic stress that are not expected to occur during fly development. We show that under a wide range of toxic scenarios, this challenge can lead to modified development that may coincide with increased tolerance to an otherwise lethal condition. Part of this response was mediated by suppression of Polycomb group genes, which in turn leads to derepression of developmental regulators and their expression in new domains. Importantly, some of the developmental alterations were epigenetically inherited by subsequent generations of unchallenged offspring. These results show that the environment can induce alternative patterns of development that are stable across multiple generations.
发育中的生物已经进化出了广泛的机制来应对反复出现的环境挑战。然而，它们如何应对罕见或意外的挑战尚不清楚，这对它们未受挑战的后代意味着什么也不清楚。在这里，我们通过用人工组织分布的有毒压力来挑战果蝇的发育来研究这些问题，这些压力在果蝇发育过程中是不会发生的。我们表明，在广泛的有毒情况下，这种挑战可能导致发育的改变，这可能与对其他致命条件的耐受性增加相吻合。这种反应的一部分是由 Polycomb 组基因的抑制介导的，这反过来又导致发育调节剂的去抑制及其在新区域的表达。重要的是，一些发育改变被未受挑战的后代的后续几代遗传了表观遗传。这些结果表明，环境可以诱导出在多个世代中稳定的替代发育模式。
