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Mechanisms for the epigenetic inheritance of stress response in single cells

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Abstract

Cells have evolved to dynamically respond to different types of environmental and physiological stress conditions. The information about a previous stress stimulus experience by a mother cell can be passed to its descendants, allowing them to better adapt to and survive in new environments. In recent years, live-cell imaging combined with cell-lineage tracking approaches has elucidated many important principles that guide stress inheritance at the single-cell and population level. In this review, we summarize different strategies that cells can employ to pass the ‘memory’ of previous stress responses to their descendants. Among these strategies, we focus on a recent discovery of how specific features of Msn2 nucleo-cytoplasmic shuttling dynamics could be inherited across cell lineages. We also discuss how stress response can be transmitted to progenies through changes in chromatin and through partitioning of anti-stress factors and/or damaged macromolecules between mother and daughter cells during cell division. Finally, we highlight how emergent technologies will help address open questions in the field.

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Fig. 1

Figure panel was taken from (Chatterjee and Acar 2018)

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Acknowledgements

We thank Lolahon Kadiri and Jessica Ye for critical reading of the manuscript. MA acknowledges funding from the National Institutes of Health (1DP2AG050461-01 and 1U54CA209992-01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale University, 219 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Yuan Xue & Murat Acar

  2. Systems Biology Institute, Yale University, 850 West Campus Drive, West Haven, CT, 06516, USA

    Yuan Xue & Murat Acar

  3. Interdepartmental Program in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Yale University, 300 George Street, Suite 501, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Murat Acar

  4. Department of Physics, Yale University, Prospect Street, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Murat Acar

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  1. Yuan Xue
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YX and MA designed the manuscript. YX drafted the manuscript. MA edited and revised the drafted manuscript. YX and MA read, discussed, and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Murat Acar.

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Communicated by M. Kupiec.

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Xue, Y., Acar, M. Mechanisms for the epigenetic inheritance of stress response in single cells. Curr Genet 64, 1221–1228 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-018-0849-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-018-0849-1

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