Biotic stress-induced epigenetic changes and transgenerational memory in plants

Plants are constantly exposed to hostile environments, which drive them to adopt several survival mechanisms including epigenetic modifications. Epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation, histone modifications, and small RNA mediated silencing play significant roles in stress tolerance. Epigenetic modifications offer plants an advantage of long-term stress adaptation through either prolonged gene regulation or transgenerational inheritance. Among the epigenetic modifications, DNA methylation is a major epigenetic mark that stably inherit to multiple generations. Transgenerational epigenetic aspect of biotic stresses in plants is less explored compared to abiotic stresses. This review emphases on biotic-stress associated epigenetic changes and their inheritance in plants.