Plants differ from animals in their capability to easily regenerate fertile adult individuals from terminally differentiated cells. This unique developmental plasticity is commonly observed in nature, where many species can reproduce asexually through the ectopic initiation of organogenic or embryogenic developmental programs. While organ-specific epigenetic marks are not passed on during sexual reproduction, the fate of epigenetic marks during asexual reproduction and the implications for clonal progeny remain unclear. Here we report that organ-specific epigenetic imprints in can be partially maintained during asexual propagation from somatic cells in which a zygotic program is artificially induced. The altered marks are inherited even over multiple rounds of sexual reproduction, becoming fixed in hybrids and resulting in heritable molecular and physiological phenotypes that depend on the identity of the founder tissue. Consequently, clonal plants display distinct interactions with beneficial and pathogenic microorganisms. Our results demonstrate how novel phenotypic variation in plants can be unlocked through altered inheritance of epigenetic marks upon asexual propagation.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805371115 | DOI Listing |
Nutrients
December 2024
Department of Nutrition, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
Background/objectives: This study builds on previous findings from mouse models, which showed that maternal overnutrition induced by a high-fat diet (HFD) promotes metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) in offspring, linked to global DNA hypermethylation. We explored whether epigenetic modulation with 5-Aza-CdR, a DNA methylation inhibitor, could prevent MAFLD in offspring exposed to maternal overnutrition.
Methods: The offspring mice from dams of maternal overnutrition were fed either a chow diet or a high-fat diet (HFD) for 10 weeks.
Int J Mol Sci
January 2025
Arthritis and Clinical Immunology Research Program, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma City, OK 73104, USA.
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a complex autoimmune disorder characterized by widespread inflammation and autoantibody production. Its development and progression involve genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors. Although genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have repeatedly identified a susceptibility signal at 16p13, its fine-scale source and its functional and mechanistic role in SLE remain unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2025
Department of Immunology and Regenerative Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
Malignant gliomas are heterogeneous tumors, mostly incurable, arising in the central nervous system (CNS) driven by genetic, epigenetic, and metabolic aberrations. Mutations in isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH1/2) enzymes are predominantly found in low-grade gliomas and secondary high-grade gliomas, with IDH1 mutations being more prevalent. Mutant-IDH1/2 confers a gain-of-function activity that favors the conversion of a-ketoglutarate (α-KG) to the oncometabolite 2-hydroxyglutarate (2-HG), resulting in an aberrant hypermethylation phenotype.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Metab
January 2025
Department of Genetics, Stanford University, School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA.
The short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) propionate and butyrate have beneficial health effects, are produced in large amounts by microbial metabolism and have been identified as unique acyl lysine histone marks. To better understand the function of these modifications, we used chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing to map the genome-wide location of four short-chain acyl histone marks, H3K18pr, H3K18bu, H4K12pr and H4K12bu, in treated and untreated colorectal cancer (CRC) and normal cells as well as in mouse intestines in vivo. We correlate these marks with open chromatin regions and gene expression to access the function of the target regions.
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