Chachar Sadaruddin, Liu Jingrong, Zhang Pingxian, Riaz Adeel, Guan Changfei, Liu Shuyuan
State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology for Arid Areas, College of Horticulture, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.
Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Crop Production, Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam, Pakistan.
Front Genet. 2021 Apr 29;12:668317. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.668317. eCollection 2021.
Epigenetic modifications alter the gene activity and function by causing change in the chromosomal architecture through DNA methylation/demethylation, or histone modifications without causing any change in DNA sequence. In plants, DNA cytosine methylation (5mC) is vital for various pathways such as, gene regulation, transposon suppression, DNA repair, replication, transcription, and recombination. Thanks to recent advances in high throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies for epigenomic "Big Data" generation, accumulated studies have revealed the occurrence of another novel DNA methylation mark, N6-methyladenosine (6mA), which is highly present on gene bodies mainly activates gene expression in model plants such as eudicot Arabidopsis () and monocot rice (). However, in non-model crops, the occurrence and importance of 6mA remains largely less known, with only limited reports in few species, such as (wild strawberry), and soybean (). Given the aforementioned vital roles of 6mA in plants, hereinafter, we summarize the latest advances of DNA 6mA modification, and investigate the historical, known and vital functions of 6mA in plants. We also consider advanced artificial-intelligence biotechnologies that improve extraction and prediction of 6mA concepts. In this Review, we discuss the potential challenges that may hinder exploitation of 6mA, and give future goals of 6mA from model plants to non-model crops.
表观遗传修饰通过DNA甲基化/去甲基化或组蛋白修饰引起染色体结构变化，从而改变基因活性和功能，而不会导致DNA序列发生任何变化。在植物中，DNA胞嘧啶甲基化（5mC）对于基因调控、转座子抑制、DNA修复、复制、转录和重组等各种途径至关重要。由于用于表观基因组“大数据”生成的高通量测序（HTS）技术的最新进展，积累的研究揭示了另一种新型DNA甲基化标记N6-甲基腺苷（6mA）的存在，它高度存在于基因体上，主要激活双子叶拟南芥和单子叶水稻等模式植物中的基因表达。然而，在非模式作物中，6mA的存在和重要性在很大程度上仍鲜为人知，仅在少数物种如野生草莓和大豆中有有限的报道。鉴于6mA在植物中的上述重要作用，在此，我们总结了DNA 6mA修饰的最新进展，并研究了其在植物中的历史、已知和重要功能。我们还考虑了改进6mA概念提取和预测的先进人工智能生物技术。在本综述中，我们讨论了可能阻碍6mA开发利用的潜在挑战，并给出了从模式植物到非模式作物的6mA未来目标。
