Elucidating mechanisms of gene restoration

孟德尔的遗传定律在上个世纪的大部分时间里指导着我们对经典遗传学和分子遗传学的探索。根据这些定律，遗传特征是独立分离的，并在一代又一代中稳定遗传。尽管存在稳定继承法的显著例外，但都得到了相对较好的定义。我们最近已经证明，带有隐性热头突变等位基因的拟南芥植物可以遗传双亲染色体基因组所没有的DNA序列信息。我们公布的数据表明，整个核基因组的序列都容易发生变化，编码区和非编码区都会受到影响。其他研究结果表明，删除的序列可以准确地恢复，并表明该过程是模板指导的。毫不奇怪，这些发现极具争议性。

Mendel's laws of inheritance have guided our exploration of classical as well as molecular genetics through much of the last century. According to these laws genetic traits segregate independently and are inherited stably from one generation to the next. Although notable exceptions to the law of stable inheritance exist, all have been relatively well defined. We have recently demonstrated that Arabidopsis plants homozygous for recessive mutant alleles of the HOTHEAD locus can inherit DNA sequence information that is absent from the chromosomal genome of their parents. Our published data suggest that sequences throughout the nuclear genome are susceptible to change and that both coding and non-coding regions are affected. Additional research results demonstrate that deleted sequences can be accurately restored and suggest that the process is template-directed. Not surprisingly, these findings are extremely controversial.