ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
When is incomplete epigenetic resetting in germ cells favoured by natural selection?
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed.
- The impact of rearing environment on C. elegans: phenotypic, transcriptomic and intergenerational responses to 3D enriched habitats.Biology open · 2026Article
- Reversibility of sex changes in the plant kingdom: more important than we thought?Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Adaptive epigenetic divergence can facilitate ecological speciation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Changes in DNA methylation contribute to rapid adaptation in bacterial plant pathogen evolution.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Deleterious mutation/epimutation-selection balance with and without inbreeding: a population (epi)genetics model.Genetics · 2024Article
- A natural bacterial pathogen of C. elegans uses a small RNA to induce transgenerational inheritance of learned avoidance.PLoS genetics · 2024Article
- A natural bacterial pathogen ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- The relative impact of parental and current environment on plant transcriptomes depends on type of stress and genotype.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Review
- The genetic basis and adult reproductive consequences of developmental thermal plasticity.The Journal of animal ecology · 2022Article
- Environmentally induced DNA methylation is inherited across generations in an aquatic keystone species.iScience · 2022Article
- Evolution of anticipatory effects mediated by epigenetic changes.Environmental epigenetics · 2022Article
- Precipitation predictability affects intra- and trans-generational plasticity and causes differential selection on root traits ofFrontiers in plant science · 2022Article
- Article
- Epigenetic memories and the evolution of infectious diseases.Nature communications · 2021Article
- How is epigenetics predicted to contribute to climate change adaptation? What evidence do we need?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Evolution of epigenetic transmission when selection acts on fecundity versus viability.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Evolution of plasticity in production and transgenerational inheritance of small RNAs under dynamic environmental conditions.PLoS genetics · 2021Article
- Environmental variation mediates the evolution of anticipatory parental effects.Evolution letters · 2020Article
- Mild drought in the vegetative stage induces phenotypic, gene expression, and DNA methylation plasticity in Arabidopsis but no transgenerational effects.Journal of experimental botany · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Resetting of epigenetic marks, such as DNA methylation, in germ cells or early embryos is not always complete. Epigenetic states may therefore persist, decay or accumulate across generations. In spite of mounting empirical evidence for incomplete resetting, it is currently poorly understood whether it simply reflects stochastic noise or plays an adaptive role in phenotype determination. Here, we use a simple model to show that incomplete resetting can be adaptive in heterogeneous environments. Transmission of acquired epigenetic states prevents mismatched phenotypes when the environment changes infrequently relative to generation time and when maternal and environmental cues are unreliable. We discuss how these results may help to interpret the emerging data on transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in plants and animals.
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