ArticleHeredity2018
Understanding the evolutionary potential of epigenetic variation: a comparison of heritable phenotypic variation in epiRILs, RILs, and natural ecotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana.
Article in Heredity, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed.
- Advances in the study of the role of epigenetic mechanisms in plant growth and response to stress.Horticulture research · 2026Article
- Partial Reproducibility and Pleiotropic Epigenetic QTLs inPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Nanopore sequencing and multiomics reveal predictable non-coding RNA activation in DNA methylation deficient Arabidopsis thaliana.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Polygenic basis of incipient reproductive isolation in hybridizing populations is revealed by pangenomic and epigenetic divergence.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Genome-Wide Identification and Analysis of DNA Methyltransferase and Demethylase Gene Families in Sweet Potato and Its Diploid Relative.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Subfunctionalization and epigenetic regulation of a biosynthetic gene cluster inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Epigenetic gene regulation in plants and its potential applications in crop improvement.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2025Review
- Evolution of plant metabolism: the state-of-the-art.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- A tool for rapid, automated characterization of population epigenomics in plants.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Epigenetic Changes Occurring in Plant Inbreeding.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Article
- Tomato plant response to heat stress: a focus on candidate genes for yield-related traits.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Review
- Environmental Adaptation of Genetically Uniform Organisms with the Help of Epigenetic Mechanisms-An Insightful Perspective on Ecoepigenetics.Epigenomes · 2022Review
- Epigenetics and its role in effecting agronomical traits.Frontiers in plant science · 2022Review
- DNA Methylation Can Mediate Local Adaptation and Response to Climate Change in the Clonal PlantFrontiers in plant science · 2022Article
- Phenotypic and Methylome Responses to Salt Stress inFrontiers in plant science · 2022Article
- Will epigenetics be a key player in crop breeding?Frontiers in plant science · 2022Review
- Epigenetic variation: A major player in facilitating plant fitness under changing environmental conditions.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2022Review
- Epigenome plasticity in plants.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2022Review
- Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Increasing evidence for epigenetic variation within and among natural plant populations has led to much speculation about its role in the evolution of plant phenotypes. However, we still have a very limited understanding of the evolutionary potential of epigenetic variation, in particular in comparison to DNA sequence-based variation. To address this question, we compared the magnitudes of heritable phenotypic variation in epigenetic recombinant inbred lines (epiRILs) of Arabidopsis thaliana-lines that mainly differ in DNA methylation but only very little in DNA sequence-with other types of A. thaliana lines that differ strongly also in DNA sequence. We grew subsets of two epiRIL populations with subsets of two genetic RIL populations, of natural ecotype collections, and of lines from a natural population in a common environment and assessed their heritable variation in growth, phenology, and fitness. Among-line phenotypic variation and broad-sense heritabilities tended to be largest in natural ecotypes, but for some traits the variation among epiRILs was comparable to that among RILs and natural ecotypes. Within-line phenotypic variation was generally similar in epiRILs, RILs, and ecotypes. Provided that phenotypic variation in epiRILs is mainly caused by epigenetic differences, whereas in RILs and natural lines it is largely driven by sequence variation, our results indicate that epigenetic variation has the potential to create phenotypic variation that is stable and substantial, and thus of evolutionary significance.
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