Veronica Barragan-Borrero

Contents Summary 1 I. Introduction 2 II. Materials and Methods 2 III. Results 5 IV. Discussion 15 Acknowledgements 17 References 18 I. Introduction Despite the vast diversity of land plants, most mechanistic understanding of plant gene function stems from few model systems with well-established genetic engineering protocols, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, Oryza sativa (rice), and Marchantia polymorpha.

1 1Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1030, Austria; 2Vienna BioCenter PhD Program, Doctoral School of the University of Vienna and Medical University of Vienna, Vienna 1030, Austria ↵3 These two authors contributed equally to this work. Corresponding author: arturo.mari-ordonez{at}gmi.oeaw.ac.at Footnotes [Supplemental material is available for this article.] Article published online before print.

Abstract A handful of model plants have provided insight into silencing of transposable elements (TEs) through RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM).