Bonasio Roberto
Epigenetics Program, Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
J Exp Biol. 2015 Jan 1;218(Pt 1):114-22. doi: 10.1242/jeb.110809.
Epigenetics studies the emergence of different phenotypes from a single genotype. Although these processes are essential to cellular differentiation and transcriptional memory, they are also widely used in all branches of the tree of life by organisms that require plastic but stable adaptation to their physical and social environment. Because of the inherent flexibility of epigenetic regulation, a variety of biological phenomena can be traced back to evolutionary adaptations of few conserved molecular pathways that converge on chromatin. For these reasons chromatin biology and epigenetic research have a rich history of chasing discoveries in a variety of model organisms, including yeast, flies, plants and humans. Many more fascinating examples of epigenetic plasticity lie outside the realm of model organisms and have so far been only sporadically investigated at a molecular level; however, recent progress on sequencing technology and genome editing tools have begun to blur the lines between model and non-model organisms, opening numerous new avenues for investigation. Here, I review examples of epigenetic phenomena in non-model organisms that have emerged as potential experimental systems, including social insects, fish and flatworms, and are becoming accessible to molecular approaches.
表观遗传学研究单一基因型如何产生不同的表型。尽管这些过程对于细胞分化和转录记忆至关重要，但它们也被那些需要灵活而稳定地适应其物理和社会环境的生物广泛应用于生命之树的各个分支。由于表观遗传调控具有内在的灵活性，多种生物学现象都可以追溯到少数汇聚于染色质的保守分子途径的进化适应。基于这些原因，染色质生物学和表观遗传学研究在包括酵母、果蝇、植物和人类在内的多种模式生物中有着丰富的发现史。更多关于表观遗传可塑性的迷人例子存在于模式生物之外，到目前为止仅在分子水平上进行了零星的研究；然而，测序技术和基因组编辑工具的最新进展已开始模糊模式生物与非模式生物之间的界限，开辟了众多新的研究途径。在此，我回顾了非模式生物中已成为潜在实验系统的表观遗传现象的例子，包括社会性昆虫、鱼类和扁形虫，并且分子方法正逐渐适用于这些研究。
