Abstract
Plants grow continuously, forming new meristem-derived organs and tissues throughout their post-embryonic life. As sessile organisms, plants need to constantly integrate and reflect environmental fluctuations in their growth and development, which can translate into high level of developmental plasticity in response to environmental changes (Gaillochet and Lohmann, 2015).
Alternatively, variable environments can select for robustness, where organisms function across a wide range of conditions with little change in phenotype. Plant growth is then governed by complex interplay of phytohormone signaling, chromatin structure remodeling and gene expression reprogramming.
How these regulatory levels are interconnected remains largely enigmatic, but mechanistic evidence of crosstalk between phytohormone signaling and chromatin organization is emerging. Here we review (1) evidences of molecular mechanisms that mediate the crosstalk between phytohormone signaling, chromatin structure and gene expression (2) how this crosstalk may link to plant developmental plasticity and robustness and finally (3) why meristems may represent central places for this crosstalk allowing plasticity and environmental memory.