42 / SEEDWORLD.COM DECEMBER 2017 CLASSICAL GENETICS HAS been with us for a long time, ever since Gregor Mendel put forward his laws on the basic mechanisms of heredity in the 19th century. Classical genetics has led to wondrous developments in agriculture, including GM and gene editing technologies. And now, another area of study is on the cusp of changing our ideas about plant function even more. Epigenetics, although it has existed as a concept for nearly eight decades, is becoming a new buzzword that’s causing lots of chatter in plant breeding and seed circles, and for good reason. “Epigenetic technologies are on the cusp of being industry-ready. Unlike techniques such as CRISPR, it’s not quite there yet — but very close,” says Michiel van Lookeren Campagne, head of seeds research at Syngenta. A field like epigenetics holds great promise for a company like Syngenta, he says, which invests a lot of time and money in dealing with the regulatory hur- dles that invariably come with breeding plants that have had their genetic codes altered in some way. Flipping Switches Epigenetics comes from the Greek root word epi, meaning “on” or “on top of.” “Epigenetics essentially sits on top of the layer of classical genetics, which has been the basis of all breeding programs,” says van Lookeren Campagne. Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene function that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence. Epigenetic changes in plants do not occur as a result of any changes to the plant’s DNA, but as a result of other factors like changes to chromosomes that affect gene activity and expression. Basically, van Lookeren Campagne explains, epigenetic changes occur when various “switches” in DNA are flipped on and off, triggering different reactions within the plant. He notes that epigenetics as a field really took off in the 1990s when Dutch and American molecular biologists studying flower color of petunias obtained a number of unexpected results that were difficult to explain. They were trying to increase the color intensity of the petals in petunias by intro- ducing a gene inducing the formation of red pigment in the flowers. But instead of intensifying the color, this treatment led For researchers studying epigenetics, looking at the surface of the genome could be the key to discovering the next big thing in plant and seed engineering. Marc Zienkiewicz, Marc Airhart and Dana Yates Exploring the Next Frontier of Genetics Michiel van Lookeren Campagne is head of seeds research at Syngenta.