Epigenetic regulation of temperature responses: past successes and future challenges

Abstract

In contrast to animals, plants cannot avoid unfavorable temperature conditions. Instead, plants have evolved intricate signaling pathways that enable them to perceive and respond to temperature. General acclimation processes that prepare the plant to respond to stressful heat and cold usually occur throughout the whole plant. More specific temperature responses, however, are limited to certain tissues or cell types. While global responses are amenable to epigenomic analyses, responses that are highly localized are more problematic as the chromatin in question is not easily accessible. Here we review current knowledge of the epigenetic regulation of FLOWERING LOCUS C and FLOWERING LOCUS T as examples of temperature-responsive flowering time regulator genes that are expressed broadly throughout the plants and in specific cell types, respectively. While this work has undoubtedly been extremely successful, we reason that future analyses would benefit from higher spatiotemporal resolution. We conclude by reviewing methods and successful applications of tissue- and cell type-specific epigenomic analyses and provide a brief outlook on future single-cell epigenomics.

Keywords

Cell-specific; chromatin; epigenomics; flowering; FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC); FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT); temperature; tissue-specific; vernalization

Published in

Journal of Experimental Botany
2021, volume: 72, number: 21, pages: 7482-7497
Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PRESS

SLU Authors

• Schmid, Markus

  • Beijing Forestry University
  • Umeå University

UKÄ Subject classification

Botany

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erab248

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/127139