A Role for RNAi in the Selective Correction of DNA Methylation Defects

DNA methylationis essential for silencing transposable elementsand some genes in higher eukaryotes, which suggests that this modification must be tightly controlled. However, accidental changes in DNA methylationcan be transmitted through mitosis (as in cancer) or meiosis, leading to epiallelic variation. We demonstrated the existence of an efficient mechanism that protects against transgenerational loss of DNA methylationin Arabidopsis . Remethylation is specific to the subset of heavily methylated repeats that are targeted by the RNA interference(RNAi) machinery. This process does not spread into flanking regions, is usually progressive over several generations, and faithfully restores wild-type methylation over target sequences in an RNAi-dependent manner. Our findings suggest an important role for RNAi in protecting genomes against long-term epigenetic defects.