Climate adaptation through phenotypic innovation will become the main challenge for plants during global warming. Plants exhibit a plethora of mechanisms to achieve environmental and developmental plasticity by inducing dynamic alterations of gene regulation and by maximizing natural variation through large population sizes. While successful over long evolutionary time scales, most of these mechanisms lack the short-term adaptive responsiveness that global warming will require. Here, we review our current understanding of the epigenetic regulation of plant genomes, with a focus on stress-response mechanisms and transgenerational inheritance. Field and laboratory-scale experiments on plants exposed to stress have revealed a multitude of temporally controlled, mechanistic strategies integrating both genetic and epigenetic changes on the genome level. We analyze inter- and intra-species population diversity to discuss how methylome differences and transposon activation can be harnessed for short-term adaptive efforts to shape co-evolving traits in response to qualitatively new climate conditions and environmental stress.

通过表型创新来适应气候将成为全球变暖期间植物面临的主要挑战。植物表现出多种机制，通过诱导基因调控的动态变化以及通过大量种群最大化自然变异来实现环境和发育的可塑性。尽管在长期的进化过程中取得了成功，但大多数机制缺乏全球变暖所需的短期适应性响应能力。在这里，我们回顾我们对植物基因组表观遗传调控的当前理解，重点是胁迫响应机制和跨代遗传。在遭受胁迫的植物上进行的野外和实验室规模的实验表明，在基因组水平上整合了遗传和表观遗传变化的多种时间控制机制策略。