Transgenerational transmission of environmental information in C. elegans
Ancestral legacy effects
Environmental change can critically affect the lifestyle, reproductive success, and life span of adult animals and their for generations. Klosin et al. showed that in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, exposure to high temperatures led to expression of endogenously repressed copies of genes—sometimes called “junk” DNA. This effect persisted for >10 generations of worms. The changes in chromatin occurred in the early embryo before the onset of transcription and were inherited through eggs and sperm.
Science, this issue p. 320
Abstract
The environment experienced by an animal can sometimes influence gene expression for one or a few subsequent generations. Here, we report the observation that a temperature-induced change in expression from a Caenorhabditis elegans heterochromatic gene array can endure for at least 14 generations. Inheritance is primarily in cis with the locus, occurs through both oocytes and sperm, and is associated with altered trimethylation of histone H3 lysine 9 (H3K9me3) before the onset of zygotic transcription. Expression profiling reveals that temperature-induced expression from endogenous repressed repeats can also be inherited for multiple generations. Long-lasting epigenetic memory of environmental change is therefore possible in this animal.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Figs. S1 to S15
Tables S1 to S4
Resources
File (aah6412_klosin_sm.pdf)
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Science
Volume 356 • Issue 6335 • 21 April 2017
Pages: 320 - 323
History
Received: 25 July 2016
Revision received: 21 December 2016
Accepted: 24 March 2017
Copyright
Copyright © 2017, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Authors
Funding Information
http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010663H2020 European Research Council: award304399, 616434
