Wang Guifeng, Köhler Claudia
Department of Plant Biology, Uppsala BioCenter, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Linnean Center for Plant Biology, Uppsala, Sweden.
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Bio-Energy Crops, School of Life Sciences, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China.
J Exp Bot. 2017 Feb 1;68(4):797-807. doi: 10.1093/jxb/erw486.
Seeds provide up to 70% of the energy intake of the human population, emphasizing the relevance of understanding the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms controlling seed formation. In flowering plants, seeds are the product of a double fertilization event, leading to the formation of the embryo and the endosperm surrounded by maternal tissues. Analogous to mammals, plants undergo extensive epigenetic reprogramming during both gamete formation and early seed development, a process that is supposed to be required to enforce silencing of transposable elements and thus to maintain genome stability. Global changes of DNA methylation, histone modifications, and small RNAs are closely associated with epigenome programming during plant reproduction. Here, we review current knowledge on chromatin changes occurring during sporogenesis and gametogenesis, as well as early seed development in major flowering plant models.
种子提供了人类高达70%的能量摄入，这凸显了理解控制种子形成的遗传和表观遗传机制的重要性。在开花植物中，种子是双受精事件的产物，导致胚胎和胚乳的形成，并被母体组织包围。与哺乳动物类似，植物在配子形成和种子早期发育过程中都会经历广泛的表观遗传重编程，这一过程被认为是实现转座元件沉默从而维持基因组稳定性所必需的。DNA甲基化、组蛋白修饰和小RNA的全局变化与植物繁殖过程中的表观基因组编程密切相关。在此，我们综述了主要开花植物模型中孢子发生、配子发生以及种子早期发育过程中染色质变化的现有知识。
