An epigenetic regulatory network that influences transgenerational inheritance of a heat-altered phenotype was recently discovered in Arabidopsis. Our analysis shows that transgenerational inheritance of the heat-altered phenotype operates in a switch-like manner and can be turned on or off as a function of heat. We also show that trans-acting small interfering RNAs act as an "inverse amplifier" of HTT5, the protein that controls the heat-altered phenotype by a currently unknown mechanism. Our analysis uses the resultant to find an analytic expression for a cusp curve in parameter space and to find a parameter bound on switch-like behavior.
Keywords: Bifurcation analysis; Regulatory networks; Resultant analysis; Switch-like bistability.
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Society for Mathematical Biology.