An approach to the ecological epigenetics in plants

Abstract

The study of epigenetics, stable chemical changes that do not involve changes in the sequence of nucleotides, has greatly advanced in recent years. These changes can be shaped by the environment and can be inherited into the following generations. There is growing evidence that the inherited variation in ecologically relevant traits can be generated through a set of epigenetic mechanisms, even in the absence of genetic variation. From an evolutionary point of view, the variability generated by epigenetic mechanisms increases the variability of phenotypes when new epialleles appear that can be selected in natural populations, reflecting the idea that inheritance might be not so inflexible. By means of epigenetic regulation it can be observed how adaptation to the environment is given by the plasticity of the genome, which results in the formation of different phenotypes according to the environment to which the organism is exposed. Despite the importance of these mechanisms there are still few experimental studies that unravel the basic questions of epigenetic ecology and even less those that have focused on nonmodel plant species.