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Gene expression

How plants avoid incest

Nature volume 466, pages 926–927 (2010)Cite this article

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Different versions of the same gene can be either dominant or recessive. A small non-coding RNA mediates such differences in dominance as part of a system that prevents inbreeding in plants.

Many flowering plants have elaborate systems to distinguish between pollens that are acceptable for fertilization and those that are unsuitable1,2. For plants of the Brassica family, one such system is self-incompatibility — rejection of genetically similar gametes. On page 983 of this issue, Tarutani et al.3 describe how small non-coding RNAs might introduce another level of mate selection through the epigenetic regulation of genes mediating self-incompatibility.

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Figure 1: | The intricacies of the S-haplotypes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Daphne Goring and Emily Indriolo are in the Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 3B2, Canada. d.goring@utoronto.ca,

    Daphne Goring & Emily Indriolo

Authors
  1. Daphne Goring
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  2. Emily Indriolo
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Goring, D., Indriolo, E. How plants avoid incest. Nature 466, 926–927 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/466926a

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