Arising from: S. J. Lolle, J. L. Victor, J. M. Young & R. E. Pruitt Nature 434, 505–509 (2005); Lolle et al. reply

Lolle et al.¹ report that loss-of-function alleles of the HOTHEAD (HTH) gene in Arabidopsis thaliana are genetically unstable, giving rise to wild-type revertants. On the basis of the reversion of many other genetic markers in hth plants, they suggested a model in which a cache of extragenomic information could cause genes to revert to the genotype of previous generations. In our attempts to reproduce this phenomenon, we discovered that hth mutants show a marked tendency to outcross (unlike wild-type A. thaliana, which is almost exclusively self-fertilizing²). Moreover, when hth plants are grown in isolation, their genetic inheritance is completely stable. These results may provide an alternative explanation for the genome wide non-mendelian inheritance reported by Lolle et al.

1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
2. Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
3. Present address: Section of Plant Biology, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA

Correspondence to: Steve E. Jacobsen^1,2 Email: jacobsen@ucla.edu

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