Plants’ Epigenetic Secrets

Unlike animals, plants stably pass on their DNA methylomes from one generation to the next. The resulting gene silencing likely hides an abundance of phenotypic variation.

Written byJef Akst

| 15 min read

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As a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, in the mid-1980s, Rob Martienssen discovered a mutation in maize plants that caused their leaves to have a very pale green color. Cells carrying this mutation don’t develop chloroplasts, and as a result, the plants couldn’t perform photosynthesis. Seedlings would survive for only a week or two on stored nutrients before perishing. “This mutant had a very strong lethal phenotype,” Martienssen says. “But from time to time it reverted,” he adds. “And it reverted in a very striking way.”

Some of his mutant corn plants began to grow striped leaves, with bands of healthy dark-green tissue interspersed with the pale-green cells, and those plants survived a little longer. “From one leaf to the next, you would ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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