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Epigenomics

Methylation's mark on inheritance

Nature volume 495, pages 181–182 (2013)Cite this article

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Epigenetic changes to the genome can have heritable effects. An epigenome-wide study of wild plants identifies shared patterns of such modifications and their associations with genetic information. See Article p.193

We have long known that genes carry the blueprint of inherited instructions that are passed from individuals to their offspring. More recent developments have shown that the make-up of an individual's epigenome — chemical and structural modifications to the genome that do not change the DNA sequence — may also contribute to this instruction set. One chemical modification, DNA methylation, is thought to target certain genetic elements, but it remains unclear what proportion of these marks is completely separate from genetic information. Reporting on page 193 of this issue, Schmitz et al.1 begin to disentangle de novo methylation from that linked to variation in DNA sequence by studying the genome and epigenome of the model plant Arabidopsis thalianaFootnote 1.

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Notes

  1. *This article and the paper under discussion1 were published online on 6 March 2013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Steven Eichten is at the Microbial and Plant Genomics Institute, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA.,

    Steven Eichten

  2. Justin Borevitz is in the Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.,

    Justin Borevitz

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  1. Steven Eichten
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  2. Justin Borevitz
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Correspondence to Justin Borevitz.

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Eichten, S., Borevitz, J. Methylation's mark on inheritance. Nature 495, 181–182 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11960

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