GOPIKA SURESH, KALAIVI VENKATESH, VEDADHARWIN RAMASAMY MAHENDIRAN AND PALAK DESAI
Abstract
This abstract discusses the crucial role of epigenetic mechanisms in mediating plant adaptation and acquired thermotolerance to detrimental heat stress. The sensing of heat by plants activates complex signaling cascades that rapidly alter the chromatin landscape. Key histone modifications, such as the activating H3K4me3, are required for the transcriptional poising that enables the fast and robust induction of key heat stress-responsive genes. Simultaneously, histone modifications with repressive roles, as well as dynamic changes in DNA methylation, are indispensable for fine-tuning the transcriptional response via the silencing of non-essential or harmful genes and thereby conserving energy. Success in immediate acclimatization depends on their integrated action-epigenetic crosstalk. Moreover, these epigenetic changes are contributing to epigenetic memory, a stable cellular state that provides priming for enhanced defense upon subsequent episodes of heat stress. Intriguingly, transmission of some of these adaptive marks from parents could represent a mechanism for transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of thermo tolerance. Elucidation of this complex epigenetic architecture will therefore open promising avenues for biotechnological translation in the development of climate-resilient crops with enhanced heat stress adaptation.