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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1446383
This article is part of the Research Topic Plant Plasticity and Epigenetics View all 6 articles

Miniature-inverted-repeat transposable elements contribute to phenotypic variation regulation of rice induced by space environment

Provisionally accepted
Lishan Chen Lishan Chen Qing Yang Qing Yang Yan Zhang Yan Zhang Yeqing Sun Yeqing Sun *
  • College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Rice samples exposed to the space environment have generated diverse phenotypic variations. Miniature-inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs), often found adjacent to genes, play a significant role in regulating the plant genome. Herein, the contribution of MITEs in regulating space-mutagenic phenotypes was explored. The space-mutagenic phenotype changes in the F3 to F5 generations of three space-mutagenic lines from the rice varieties Dongnong423 (DN423) and Dongnong (DN416) were meticulously traced. Rice leaves samples at the heading stage from three space-mutagenic lines were subjected to high coverage whole-genome bisulfite sequencing and whole-genome sequencing. These analyses were conducted to investigate the effects of MITEs related epigenetic and genetic variations on space-mutagenic phenotypes. Studies have indicated that MITEs within gene regulatory regions might contribute to the formation and differentiation of space-mutagenic phenotypes. The space environment has been shown to induce the transposable elements insertion polymorphisms of MITEs (MITEs-TIPs), with a notable preference for insertion near genes involved in stress response and phenotype regulation. The space-induced MITEs-TIPs contributed to the formation of space-mutagenic phenotype by modulating the expression of gene near the insertion site. This study underscored the pivotal role of MITEs in modulating plant phenotypic variation induced by the space environment, as well as the transgenerational stability of these phenotypic variants.

    Keywords: rice, phenotype variation, TES, Mites, Space Environment, Space mutagenesis, Environment stress

    Received: 09 Jun 2024; Accepted: 11 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Chen, Yang, Zhang and Sun. 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: Yeqing Sun, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China

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