Stress-induced chromatin changes in plants: of memories, metabolites and crop improvement

Abstract

Exposure of plants to adverse environmental conditions leads to extensive transcriptional changes. Genome-wide approaches and gene function studies have revealed the importance of chromatin-level control in the regulation of stress-responsive gene expression. Advances in understanding chromatin modifications implicated in plant stress response and identifying proteins involved in chromatin-mediated transcriptional responses to stress are briefly presented in this review. We then highlight how chromatin-mediated gene expression changes can be coupled to the metabolic status of the cell, since many of the chromatin-modifying proteins involved in transcriptional regulation depend on cofactors and metabolites that are shared with enzymes in basic metabolism. Lastly, we discuss the stability and heritability of stress-induced chromatin changes and the potential of chromatin-based strategies for increasing stress tolerance of crops.

Keywords

Abiotic stress; Energy; Acclimation; Memory; Transgenerational; Epigenetic; Chromatin remodeling; Histone modifications; Methylation; PARP; Sirtuin; Arabidopsis; Crop improvement

Published in

Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
2015, volume: 72, number: 7, pages: 1261-1273
Publisher: Springer

SLU Authors

• Hennig, Lars

  • Department of Plant Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Linnean Centre for Plant Biology

UKÄ Subject classification

Evolutionary Biology
Agricultural Science
Developmental Biology

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-014-1792-z

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/72373