Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge MA 02142, USA.
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge MA 02142, USA; Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA 02139, USA.
Curr Opin Plant Biol. 2024 Oct;81:102591. doi: 10.1016/j.pbi.2024.102591. Epub 2024 Jun 29.
Endosperm is a major evolutionary innovation of flowering plants, and its proper development critically impacts seed growth and viability. Epigenetic regulators have a key function in parental control of endosperm development. Notably, epigenetic regulation of parental genome dosage is a major determinant of seed development success, and disruption of this balance can produce inviable seed, as observed in some interploidy and interspecific crosses. These postzygotic reproduction barriers are also a potent driver of speciation. The molecular machinery and regulatory architecture governing endosperm development is proposed to have evolved under parental conflict. In this review, we emphasize parental conflict as a dialectic conflict and discuss recent findings about the epigenetic molecular machinery that mediates parental conflict in the endosperm.
胚乳是开花植物的主要进化创新，其适当的发育对种子的生长和活力至关重要。表观遗传调节剂在胚乳发育的亲本控制中具有关键作用。值得注意的是，亲本基因组剂量的表观遗传调控是种子发育成功的主要决定因素，这种平衡的破坏会产生不可育的种子，如在一些异倍体和种间杂交中观察到的那样。这些合子后生殖障碍也是物种形成的一个有力驱动因素。据推测，调控胚乳发育的分子机制和调控结构是在亲本冲突下进化而来的。在这篇综述中，我们强调了亲本冲突是一种辩证冲突，并讨论了最近关于介导胚乳中亲本冲突的表观遗传分子机制的发现。
