Dataset Information

Mild drought in the vegetative stage induces phenotypic, gene expression, and DNA methylation plasticity in Arabidopsis but no transgenerational effects.

ABSTRACT: There is renewed interest in whether environmentally induced changes in phenotypes can be heritable. In plants, heritable trait variation can occur without DNA sequence mutations through epigenetic mechanisms involving DNA methylation. However, it remains unknown whether this alternative system of inheritance responds to environmental changes and if it can provide a rapid way for plants to generate adaptive heritable phenotypic variation. To assess potential transgenerational effects induced by the environment, we subjected four natural accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana together with the reference accession Col-0 to mild drought in a multi-generational experiment. As expected, plastic responses to drought were observed in each accession, as well as a number of intergenerational effects of the parental environments. However, after an intervening generation without stress, except for a very few trait-based parental effects, descendants of stressed and non-stressed plants were phenotypically indistinguishable irrespective of whether they were grown in control conditions or under water deficit. In addition, genome-wide analysis of DNA methylation and gene expression in Col-0 demonstrated that, while mild drought induced changes in the DNA methylome of exposed plants, these variants were not inherited. We conclude that mild drought stress does not induce transgenerational epigenetic effects.

SUBMITTER: Van Dooren TJM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7307858 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mild drought in the vegetative stage induces phenotypic, gene expression, and DNA methylation plasticity in Arabidopsis but no transgenerational effects.

Van Dooren Tom J M TJM Silveira Amanda Bortolini AB Gilbault Elodie E Jiménez-Gómez José M JM Martin Antoine A Bach Liên L Tisné Sébastien S Quadrana Leandro L Loudet Olivier O Colot Vincent V

Journal of experimental botany 20200601 12

There is renewed interest in whether environmentally induced changes in phenotypes can be heritable. In plants, heritable trait variation can occur without DNA sequence mutations through epigenetic mechanisms involving DNA methylation. However, it remains unknown whether this alternative system of inheritance responds to environmental changes and if it can provide a rapid way for plants to generate adaptive heritable phenotypic variation. To assess potential transgenerational effects induced by ...[more]

PMID: 32166321

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Project description:BackgroundUnderstanding root system morphology in bread wheat is critical for identifying root traits to breed cultivars with improved resource uptake and better adaptation to adverse environments. Variability in root morphological traits at early vegetative stages was examined among 184 bread wheat genotypes originating from 37 countries grown in a semi-hydroponic phenotyping system.ResultsAt the onset of tillering (Z2.1, 35?days after transplanting), plants had up to 42?cm in shoot height and 158?cm long in root depth. Phenotypic variation existed for both shoot and root traits, with a maximal 4.3-fold difference in total root length and 5-fold difference in root dry mass among the 184 genotypes. Of the 41 measured traits, 24 root traits and four shoot traits had larger coefficients of variation (CV???0.25). Strong positive correlations were identified for some key root traits (i.e., root mass, root length, and these parameters at different depths) and shoot traits (i.e., shoot mass and tiller number) (P???0.05). The selected 25 global traits (at whole-plant level) contributed to one of the five principal components (eigenvalues>?1) capturing 83.0% of the total variability across genotypes. Agglomerative hierarchical clustering analysis separated the 184 genotypes into four (at a rescaled distance of 15) or seven (at a rescaled distance of 10) major groups based on the same set of root traits. Strong relationships between performance traits (dry mass) with several functional traits such as specific root length, root length intensity and root tissue density suggest their linkage to plant growth and fitness strategies.ConclusionsLarge phenotypic variability in root system morphology in wheat genotypes was observed at the tillering stage using established semi-hydroponic phenotyping techniques. Phenotypic differences in and trait correlations among some interesting root traits may be considered for breeding wheat cultivars with efficient water acquisition and better adaptation to abiotic stress.

Dataset Information

Mild drought in the vegetative stage induces phenotypic, gene expression, and DNA methylation plasticity in Arabidopsis but no transgenerational effects.

Publications

Mild drought in the vegetative stage induces phenotypic, gene expression, and DNA methylation plasticity in Arabidopsis but no transgenerational effects.

Similar Datasets

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