Environmental Influence on nematode mouth form

The ability of plants and animals to incorporate environmental information into phenotypic changes is a fascinating yet poorly understood phenomenon. We sought to use the mouth-form polyphenism of Pristionchus pacificus as model to investigate the molecular mechanism of environmental influence . We employed RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) and chromatin immunoprecipitation and sequencing (ChIP-seq) to identify the genes and corresponding epigenetic marks that respond to environmental cues, respectively. In the last part of our study we experimentally tested that the identified marks are responsible for switch gene transcription and developmental decisions to change phenotype. This study adds to a growing body of evidence that histone acetylation conveys environmental cues into development to produce optimal phenotypes.