期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2017
卷号：114
期号：14
页码：3702-3707
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1700368114
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Hybrid incompatibility resulting from deleterious gene combinations is thought to be an important step toward reproductive isolation and speciation. Here, we demonstrate involvement of a silent epiallele in hybrid incompatibility. In Arabidopsis thaliana accession Cvi-0, one of the two copies of a duplicated histidine biosynthesis gene, HISN6A , is mutated, making HISN6B essential. In contrast, in accession Col-0, HISN6A is essential because HISN6B is not expressed. Owing to these differences, Cvi-0 × Col-0 hybrid progeny that are homozygous for both Cvi-0 HISN6A and Col-0 HISN6B do not survive. We show that HISN6B of Col-0 is not a defective pseudogene, but a stably silenced epiallele. Mutating HISTONE DEACETYLASE 6 ( HDA6 ), or the cytosine methyltransferase genes MET1 or CMT3, erases HISN6B's silent locus identity, reanimating the gene to circumvent hisn6a lethality and hybrid incompatibility. These results show that HISN6 -dependent hybrid lethality is a revertible epigenetic phenomenon and provide additional evidence that epigenetic variation has the potential to limit gene flow between diverging populations of a species.
