Regulación epigenética asociada a metabolismos fotosintéticos C3, C4 y CAM

Abstract

Photosynthesis allows the existence of food webs and in turn the subsistence of life on earth. Among vascular plants, three carbon fixation pathways have emerged: C3, C4 and CAM; they can maintain a single metabolism throughout their lives (constitutive), or they can modulate between two metabolisms depending on the conditions to which they are exposed (facultative). It has been found that all vascular plants possess the genetic information necessary to have any of the metabolisms; in addition, the C4 and CAM metabolisms largely avoid photorespiration and allow greater resistance to warm temperatures. Because of this, these plants can be a study model for developing foods resistant to climate change. For this reason, studies have been conducted focused on the regulation of essential genes of each metabolism, including those focused on a probable epigenetic regulation, which refers to various mechanisms of gene regulation that do not affect their sequence and that are mitotically and/or meiotically heritable. Taking into account the above definition, a literature review of articles associating epigenetics with the regulation of C3, C4 and CAM metabolisms, both constitutive and facultative, is carried out in this paper. In addition, we hypothesize about approaches for future studies where epigenetic regulation is likely to exist, especially in the transition between metabolisms in facultative plants and in tissue development in C4 and CAM plants.