Plants use their epigenetic memories to adapt to climate change

Climate change is a major problem faced by the environment. Climate change affects every living organism in some or the other way. Animals are capable enough to quickly adapt to climate change. Now, a new article shows how plants adapt to these climate change. A paper published in the journal Trends in Plant Science detailed how plants are rapidly adopting the adverse effects of climate change. It also reported on how they are passing these adaptations to their offspring.

Keywords: Climate change, plants, environment, somatic memory, epigenetics

Federico Martinelli, a plant geneticist at the University of Florence said, "One day I thought how the living style and experience of a person can affect his or her gametes transmitting molecular marks of their life into their children. Immediately I thought that even more epigenetic marks must be transmitted in plants, being that plants are sessile organisms that are subjected to many more environmental stresses than animals during their life".

Plants are facing more environmental stressors due to sudden climate change. For an instance, due to climate change winters are becoming short and less severe in many locations. According to researchers, many plants require a minimum period of cold for setting up their environmental clock to fulfill their flowering time. As cold seasons are shortening, plants have adapted to require fewer periods of cold to delay flowering. These mechanisms allow plants to avoid flowering in periods that are less suitable for their reproduction.

Plants don't have any neural networks for memory circumstances. Their memory is completely based on cellular, molecular, and biochemical networks. These networks make up the somatic memory as termed by researchers. Researcher Martinelli said, "These mechanisms allow plants to recognize the occurrence of a previous environmental condition and to react more promptly in presence of the same consequential condition". 

Then, these somatic memories can be passed to the plant's progeny via epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study that defines how gene activity is controlled by cells without altering the DNA sequence. Researcher Martinelli said, "We have highlighted key genes, proteins, and small oligonucleotides, which previous studies have shown play a key role in the memory of abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, cold, heat, and heavy metals and pathogen attacks. In this peer-reviewed opinion piece, we provide several examples that demonstrate the existence of molecular mechanisms modulating plant memory to environmental stresses and affecting the adaptation of offspring to these stresses".

He added, "We are particularly interested in decoding the epigenetic alphabet underlying all the modifications of the genetic material caused by the environment, without changes in DNA sequence. This is especially important when we consider the rapid climate change we observe today that every living organism, including plants, needs to quickly adapt to in order to survive".

This research has made a way for scientists to make observations based on climate changes related to plants adapting capability. It will be also further useful in considering the impacts of climate change on plants. It will also help in dealing with the adverse effects of climate change considering plants.