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Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published online on February 20, 2007
Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkm029
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© 2007 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Molecular Biology

Transgenerational changes in the genome stability and methylation in pathogen-infected plants

(Virus-induced plant genome instability)

Alexander Boyko1, Palak Kathiria1, Franz J. Zemp1, Youli Yao1, Igor Pogribny2 and Igor Kovalchuk1,*

1Department of Biological Sciences, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB. T1K 3M4, Canada, and 2Division of Biochemical Toxicology, National Center for Toxicological Research, Jefferson, AR 72079, USA

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1-403 329 2579; Fax: +1-403 329 2242; Email: igor.kovalchuk{at}uleth.ca

Received May 2, 2006. Revised January 4, 2007. Accepted January 5, 2007.

Previously, we reported the generation of a virus-induced systemic signal that increased the somatic and meiotic recombination rates in tobacco mosaic virus (TMV)-infected tobacco plants. Here, we analyzed the progeny of plants that received the signal and found that these plants also have a higher frequency of rearrangements in the loci carrying the homology to LRR region of the gene of resistance to TMV (N-gene). Analysis of the stability of repetitive elements from Nicotiana tabacum loci and 5.8S ribosomal RNA loci did not show any changes. Further analysis of the changes in the progeny of infected plants revealed that they had substantially hypermethylated genomes. At the same time, loci-specific methylation analysis showed: (1) profound hypomethylation in several LRR-containing loci; (2) substantial hypermethylation of actin loci and (3) no change in methylation in the loci of repetitive elements from N. tabacum or 5.8S ribosomal RNA. Global genome hypermethylation of the progeny is believed to be part of a general protection mechanism against stress, whereas locus-specific hypomethylation is associated with a higher frequency of rearrangements. Increased recombination events combined with the specific methylation pattern induced by pathogen attack could be a sign of an adaptive response by plants.


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