TY - JOUR
T1 - Transgenerational Effects and Epigenetic Memory in the Clonal Plant Trifolium repens
AU - Rendina González, Alejandra Pilar
AU - Preite, Veronica
AU - Verhoeven, Koen J. F.
AU - Latzel, Vít
N1 - 6646, TE
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Transgenerational effects can modify phenotypes of offspring generations playing thus a potentially important role in ecology and evolution of many plant species. These effects have been studied mostly across generations of sexually reproducing species. A substantial proportion of plant species are however reproducing asexually, for instance via clonal growth. Transgenerational effects are thought to be enabled by heritable epigenetic modification of DNA, although unambiguous evidence is still scarce. On the clonal herb white clover (Trifolium repens), we tested the generality of clonal transgenerational effects across five genotypes and five parental environments including soil contamination and above-ground competition. Moreover, by genome wide-methylation variation analysis we explored the role of drought, one of the parental environments that triggered the strongest transgenerational effects. We tested the induction of epigenetic changes in offspring generations using several intensities and durations of drought stress. We found that transgenerational effects of different environments were highly genotype specific and all tested environments triggered transgenerational effects at least in some genotypes. In addition, parental drought stresses triggered epigenetic change in T. repens and most of the induced epigenetic change was maintained across several clonal offspring generations. We conclude that transgenerational effects are common and genotype specific in clonal plant T. repens and potentially under epigenetic control.
AB - Transgenerational effects can modify phenotypes of offspring generations playing thus a potentially important role in ecology and evolution of many plant species. These effects have been studied mostly across generations of sexually reproducing species. A substantial proportion of plant species are however reproducing asexually, for instance via clonal growth. Transgenerational effects are thought to be enabled by heritable epigenetic modification of DNA, although unambiguous evidence is still scarce. On the clonal herb white clover (Trifolium repens), we tested the generality of clonal transgenerational effects across five genotypes and five parental environments including soil contamination and above-ground competition. Moreover, by genome wide-methylation variation analysis we explored the role of drought, one of the parental environments that triggered the strongest transgenerational effects. We tested the induction of epigenetic changes in offspring generations using several intensities and durations of drought stress. We found that transgenerational effects of different environments were highly genotype specific and all tested environments triggered transgenerational effects at least in some genotypes. In addition, parental drought stresses triggered epigenetic change in T. repens and most of the induced epigenetic change was maintained across several clonal offspring generations. We conclude that transgenerational effects are common and genotype specific in clonal plant T. repens and potentially under epigenetic control.
KW - international
U2 - 10.3389/fpls.2018.01677
DO - 10.3389/fpls.2018.01677
M3 - Article
SN - 1664-462X
VL - 9
SP - 1677
JO - Frontiers in Plant Science
JF - Frontiers in Plant Science
ER -