A Polycomb-based switch underlying quantitative epigenetic memory

Andrew Angel, Jie Song, Caroline Dean () and Martin Howard ()
Additional contact information
Andrew Angel: John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Norwich NR4 7UH, UK
Jie Song: John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Norwich NR4 7UH, UK
Caroline Dean: John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Norwich NR4 7UH, UK
Martin Howard: John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Norwich NR4 7UH, UK

Nature, 2011, vol. 476, issue 7358, 105-108

Abstract: Silencing the memory of winter Vernalization, by which plants perceive and retain a memory of winter that allows them to germinate or flower in spring, is a classic epigenetic process. In Arabidopsis thaliana, it involves Polycomb-based silencing of the floral repressor FLC during cold periods. FLC then generates stable silencing when temperatures rise. A combination of mathematical modelling and experiment has been used to generate a quantitative model of the role of FLC in vernalization. A tightly localized nucleation region of Polycomb silencing generated in the cold seems to be sufficient to switch the epigenetic state of the FLC locus after return to the warm, with quantitative silencing achieved by the fraction of cells that switch to the silenced state.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10241 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:476:y:2011:i:7358:d:10.1038_nature10241

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature10241

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().