Morgado Lionel, Preite Veronica, Oplaat Carla, Anava Sarit, Ferreira de Carvalho Julie, Rechavi Oded, Johannes Frank, Verhoeven Koen J F
Groningen Bioinformatics Centre, University of Groningen, AG Groningen, The Netherlands.
Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Mol Biol Evol. 2017 Aug 1;34(8):2035-2040. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msx150.
Plants can show long-term effects of environmental stresses and in some cases a stress "memory" has been reported to persist across generations, potentially mediated by epigenetic mechanisms. However, few documented cases exist of transgenerational effects that persist for multiple generations and it remains unclear if or how epigenetic mechanisms are involved. Here, we show that the composition of small regulatory RNAs in apomictic dandelion lineages reveals a footprint of drought stress and salicylic acid treatment experienced two generations ago. Overall proportions of 21 and 24 nt RNA pools were shifted due to grandparental treatments. While individual genes did not show strong up- or downregulation of associated sRNAs, the subset of genes that showed the strongest shifts in sRNA abundance was significantly enriched for several GO terms including stress-specific functions. This suggests that a stress-induced signal was transmitted across multiple unexposed generations leading to persistent changes in epigenetic gene regulation.
植物能够展现出环境胁迫的长期影响，在某些情况下，据报道一种胁迫“记忆”会跨代持续存在，这可能是由表观遗传机制介导的。然而，很少有文献记载跨代影响能持续多代的情况，并且表观遗传机制是否参与以及如何参与仍不清楚。在这里，我们表明无融合生殖蒲公英谱系中小调控RNA的组成揭示了两代之前经历的干旱胁迫和水杨酸处理的印记。由于祖父母辈的处理，21和24 nt RNA池的总体比例发生了变化。虽然单个基因并未显示出相关小RNA的强烈上调或下调，但在小RNA丰度变化最强烈的基因子集中，几个包括应激特异性功能在内的基因本体术语显著富集。这表明一种应激诱导信号跨多代未受影响的世代进行了传递，导致表观遗传基因调控发生持续变化。
