Vernalization is acquisition of the capacity to flower following prolonged cold. In Arabidopsis thaliana, persistent silencing of the floral repressor FLC helps retain information about winter after temperatures rise.
The memory's lifetime differs from its acquisition. Experiments on resetting between generations show why an individual plant can remember cold while its descendants still need their own cold exposure. Perennial plants can use different seasonal reactivation patterns, as illustrated by PEP1 in Arabis alpina.[ref]
Epigenetic reprogramming that prevents transgenerational inheritance of the vernalized state by Pedro Crevillén and others. 2014, resetting of vernalization memory
[ref]The Arabis alpina FLC orthologue, whose seasonal reactivation contributes to perennial flowering behavior.
FLOWERING LOCUS C, or FLC, encodes a floral repressor in Arabidopsis thaliana. Prolonged cold can establish a persistently silenced state, connecting chromatin regulation to the memory underlying vernalization.
Natural variation in FLC silencing contributes to differences in cold requirements. Measuring later flowering and the persistence of repression tests memory, whereas measuring expression only during cold does not establish that the regulatory change survives warming.[ref]
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