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The world’s climate is warming at an unprecedented rate. Understanding how, and over what time frame, plants can adapt to warmer temperatures is a fundamental first step towards the development of mitigation strategies ensuring the sustainability of forests, cultivated crops and native species.

Under this project, Drs. Greg Henry and Loren Rieseberg from UBC aimed to understand if plants can adapt quickly enough to withstand the rapidly changing climate by modifying the way they regulate their DNA. Changes to DNA regulation, using mechanisms such as DNA methylation (when methyl groups are added to DNA, changing how genetic instructions are read by cells) can cause genes to function differently without changes to the genetic sequence (epigenetics), presenting a faster alternative, or complement to, genetic adaptation.

To compare how plants might use epigenetic mechanisms – changes in gene activity that can be influenced by environmental factors – to adapt to their surroundings, Dryas octopetalata, a small plant related to strawberries, was collected from sites in the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX), a study researching the impacts of climate change on tundra ecosystems. Samples were collected from controlled tundra locations and from artificially warmed plots and their DNA was sequenced and compared.

The team found differences in DNA methylation patterns between plants from controlled and warmed plots. Plants from warmed plots expressed increased methylation in regions located near genes associated with resistance to stress. Researchers also found 150 genes which were expressed differently between the two environments, with plants from warmed plots showing reduced expression in comparison. This suggests that external environmental conditions can affect the way DNA is regulated and how genes are expressed.

To investigate if these changes could be passed on to future generations, seeds were collected from these samples, grown in controlled growth chambers, and the DNA from these seedlings was sequenced. When comparing five regions in the genome, offspring showed similar methylation patterns to their mothers which implies that changes in methylation can be inherited for at least one generation and continue to affect the way DNA is regulated in offspring.

This research informs us of the potential for plants to rapidly adapt to a changing climate using DNA regulating methods, and that these changes can be passed to offspring which may result in a level of climate change resilience and mitigation.

This could be particularly important when considering economically important crops and possible climate change resistance in agriculture.