PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Epigenet. Epigenom.
Sec. Plant Epigenetics
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/freae.2025.1648270
This article is part of the Research TopicEpigenetic Trailblazers: Pioneers and Perspectives in Cellular Memory and DifferentiationView all articles
Pioneers of chromosome elimination
Provisionally accepted
- University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
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Epigenetic traits are persistent cellular and organismal properties that do not result from changes in DNA sequence. One such property involves transmission of chromosomes, which entails the formation of highly specialized chromatin structures, the kinetochores, on selected chromosomal regions, called centromeres. Centromere function is essential and centromeres are determined epigenetically by the deposition of a variant histone H3 CENP-A (CENH3 in plants). Either reduced or ectopic function alone leads to genome instability, decreased fitness, aneuploid syndromes, and cancer. At times, however, centromeres malfunction in an apparently programmed mode. This is exemplified by a peculiar centromeric syndrome involving selective elimination of a chromosome set, which can affect a wide range of organisms, including plants. Over half a century ago, plant geneticists described this syndrome in interspecific crosses of barley. Building on their work, we examine the growing understanding of how CENH3 function can be modified to affect epigenetic regulation of centromeres.
Keywords: Centromere, CENP-A, plant breeding, evolution, Chromosome elimination, missegregation
Received: 16 Jun 2025; Accepted: 16 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Comai and Marimuthu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Luca Comai, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
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