Environment-induced heritable variations are common in Arabidopsis thaliana

Xiaohe Lin, Junjie Yin, Yifan Wang, Jing Yao, Qingshun Q. Li, Vit Latzel, Oliver Bossdorf and Yuan-Ye Zhang ()
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Xiaohe Lin: Xiamen University
Junjie Yin: Xiamen University
Yifan Wang: Xiamen University
Jing Yao: Xiamen University
Qingshun Q. Li: Xiamen University
Vit Latzel: Institute of Botany of the CAS
Oliver Bossdorf: University of Tübingen
Yuan-Ye Zhang: Xiamen University

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Parental or ancestral environments can induce heritable phenotypic changes, but whether such environment-induced heritable changes are a common phenomenon remains unexplored. Here, we subject 14 genotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana to 10 different environmental treatments and observe phenotypic and genome-wide gene expression changes over four successive generations. We find that all treatments caused heritable phenotypic and gene expression changes, with a substantial proportion stably transmitted over all observed generations. Intriguingly, the susceptibility of a genotype to environmental inductions could be predicted based on the transposon abundance in the genome. Our study thus challenges the classic view that the environment only participates in the selection of heritable variation and suggests that the environment can play a significant role in generating of heritable variations.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49024-3

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