Revolutionary new view on heritability in plants: Complex heritable traits not only determined by changes in DNA sequence

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Complex heritable traits are not only determined by changes in the DNA sequence. Scientists from the University of Groningen Bioinformatics Centre, together with their French colleagues, have shown that epigenetic marks can affect traits such as flowering time and architecture in plants. Furthermore, these marks are passed on for many generations in a stable manner. Their results were published in Science on the 6th of February 2014. It seems that a revision of genetics textbooks is now in order.We’ve all been taught that DNA is the physical foundation of heredity. Our genes are spelled out in the four famous letters A, T, C and G, which together form the genetic code. A single letter change in this code can lead to a gene ceasing to function or failing to work properly.The fact that the functioning of our genes is also affected by epigenetic marks has been known for decades. For example, the nucleotide cytosine (the C in the genetic code) can be changed into a methylcytosine. This cytosine methylation, which is one type of epigenetic mark, is typically associated with repression of gene activity.Epigenetic inheritance’While in mammals epigenetic marks are typically reset every generation, in plants no such dramatic resetting takes place. This opens the door to epigenetic inheritance in plants: epigenetic changes that are acquired in one generation tend to be stably passed on to the next generation’, explains Frank Johannes, assistant professor at the GBIC and co-lead scientist for the Science study.Johannes’s French colleagues have produced inbred strains of the model plant Arabidopsis, in which the epigenetic marks vary between strains although the DNA sequence is almost identical. …


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