DNA methylation mediates overgrazing-induced clonal transgenerational plasticity

Jingjing Yin, Weibo Ren*, ELLEN FRY, Siyuan Sun, Huijie Han, Fenghui Guo

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (journal)peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)
17 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Overgrazing generally induces dwarfism in grassland plants, and these phenotypic traits could be transmitted to clonal offspring even when overgrazing is excluded. However, the dwarfism-transmitted mechanism remains largely unknown, despite generally thought to be enabled by epigenetic modification. To clarify the potential role of DNA methylation on clonal transgenerational effects, we conducted a greenhouse experiment with Leymus chinensis clonal offspring from different cattle/sheep overgrazing histories via the demethylating agent 5-azacytidine. The results showed that clonal offspring from overgrazed (by cattle or sheep) parents were dwarfed and the auxin content of leaves significantly decreased compared to offspring from no-grazed parents'. The 5-azaC application generally increased the auxin content and promoted the growth of overgrazed offspring while inhibited no-grazed offspring growth. Meanwhile, there were similar trends in the expression level of genes related to auxin-responsive target genes (ARF7, ARF19), and signal transduction gene (AZF2). These results suggest that DNA methylation leads to overgrazing-induced plant transgenerational dwarfism via inhibiting auxin signal pathway.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-10
JournalScience of the Total Environment
Early online date5 Jul 2023
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 5 Jul 2023

Keywords

  • overgrazing
  • plant dwarfism
  • DNA methylation
  • auxin pathway
  • Leymus chinensis

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