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DNA methylation: an emerging paradigm of gene regulation under drought stress in plants

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Abstract

Drought is an enormous threat to global crop production. In order to ensure food security for the burgeoning population, we must develop drought tolerant crop varieties. This necessitates the identification of drought-responsive genes and understanding the mechanisms involved in their regulation. DNA methylation is a widely studied mechanism of epigenetic regulation of gene expression, which is known to play vital role in conferring tolerance to various biotic and abiotic stress factors. The recent advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, has allowed unprecedented access to genome-wide methylation marks, with single base resolution. The most important roles of DNA methylation have been studied in terms of gene body methylation (gbM), which is associated with regulation of both transcript abundance and its stability. The availability of mutants for the various genes encoding enzymes involved in methylation of DNA has allowed ascertainment of the biological significance of methylation. Even though a vast number of reports have emerged in the recent past, where both genome-wide methylation landscape and locus specific changes in DNA methylation have been studied, a conclusive picture with regards to the biological role of DNA methylation is still lacking. Compounding this, is the lack of sufficient evidence supporting the heritability of these epigenetic changes. Amongst the various epigenetic variations, the DNA methylation changes are observed to be the most stable. This review describes the drought-induced changes in DNA methylation identified across different plant species. We also briefly describe the stress memory contributed by these changes. The identification of heritable, drought-induced methylation marks would broaden the scope of crop improvement in the future.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Director, ICAR-NIPB for providing valuable guidance during the course of study for the first author.

Funding

The authors work in this area is supported by fellowship provided by NAHEP-CAAST to SY and DST- SERB (CRG/2019/006643) Grant to PKJ.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICAR-National Institute for Plant Biotechnology, New Delhi, 110012, India

    Sheel Yadav, Gopal Kalwan & P. K. Jain

  2. PG School, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012, India

    Sheel Yadav, Shashi Meena & Gopal Kalwan

  3. Division of Genomic Resources, ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi, 110012, India

    Sheel Yadav

  4. Division of Plant Physiology, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012, India

    Shashi Meena

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  1. Sheel Yadav
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SY and PKJ conceived the idea and prepared the draft manuscript. GK and SM suggested improvements in the article. All authors approved the final version of the article.

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Yadav, S., Meena, S., Kalwan, G. et al. DNA methylation: an emerging paradigm of gene regulation under drought stress in plants. Mol Biol Rep 51, 311 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-024-09243-9

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