REVIEW

Epigenetics, a mode for plants to respond to abiotic stresses

  • Weihua QIAO , 1 ,
  • Liumin FAN , 2
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  • 1. Insititute of Crop Sciences/National Key Facility for Crop Resources and Genetic Improvement, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
  • 2. State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, Genetic Engineering Peking-Yale Joint Center of Plant Molecular Genetics and Agro-biotechnology, College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

Received date: 09 Dec 2010

Accepted date: 24 Jan 2011

Published date: 01 Dec 2011

Copyright

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Abstract

Epigenetics has been becoming a hot topic in recent years. It can be mechanisms that regulate gene expression without changing DNA base sequence. In plants epigenetic regulation has been implicated to be a very important phenomenon and mechanism for the regulation of responses to environmental stresses. Environmental signals induce various epigenetic modifications in the genome, and these epigenetic modifications might likely be inherited to the next generation that behaves with enhanced ability to tolerate stresses. This review highlights recent advances in the study of epigenetics in plant stress responses.

Cite this article

Weihua QIAO , Liumin FAN . Epigenetics, a mode for plants to respond to abiotic stresses[J]. Frontiers in Biology, 2011 , 6(6) : 477 -481 . DOI: 10.1007/s11515-011-1128-4

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant no. 2009CB941500), by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 30770207), and partially by the State Key Laboratory of Crop Biology, Shandong Agricultrual University (No. 2010KF01).
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