Abstract
BackgroundThe genetic structure and differentiation of wild emmer wheat suggests that genetic diversity is eco-geographically structured. However, very little is known about the structure and extent of the heritable epigenetic variation and its influence on local adaptation in natural populations.ResultsThe structure and extent of the heritable methylation-based epigenetic variation were assessed within and among natural populations of Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccoides. We used methylation sensitive amplified polymorphism (MSAP) and transposon methylation display (TMD) techniques, to assess the methylation status of random genomic CCGG sites and CCGG sites flanking transposable elements (TEs), respectively. Both techniques were applied to the DNA of 50 emmer accessions which were collected from five different geographically isolated regions. In order to ensure the assessment of heritable epigenetic variation, all accessions were grown under common garden conditions for two generations. In all accessions, the difference in methylation levels of CCGG sites, including CCGG sites that flanked TEs, were not statistically significant and relatively high, ranging between 46 and 76 %. The pattern of methylation was significantly different among accessions, such that clear and statistically significant population-specific methylation patterns were observed.ConclusionIn this study, we have observed population-unique heritable methylation patterns in emmer wheat accessions originating from five geographically isolated regions. Our data indicate that methylation-based epigenetic diversity might be eco-geographically structured and might be partly determined by climatic and edaphic factors.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12870-015-0544-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The genetic structure and differentiation of wild emmer wheat suggests that genetic diversity is eco-geographically structured
Genome-wide analysis of DNA cytosine methylation of CCGG sites It is known that methylation patterns in plants can be inherited over generations [22]
We found that variations in the cytosine methylation are relatively high and observed population-specific epigenetic patterns based on geographical region
Summary
The genetic structure and differentiation of wild emmer wheat suggests that genetic diversity is eco-geographically structured. While crop yields have recently increased for the most part, the genetic basis of most of the important food crops has been rapidly narrowing [3] This is due to the global extension of Previous works investigating the genetic structure and differentiation of wild emmer wheat suggest that genetic diversity is eco-geographically structured and might be Venetsky et al BMC Plant Biology (2015) 15:200 partly determined by climatic and edaphic factors [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. A previous study on emmer wheat populations in microgeographic sites in Israel, using allozymes and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers, showed a possible nonrandom adaptive genetic differentiation at single and multilocus levels in contrasting soils, topographies, and climate [6]. While the observed genetic variation (of DNA markers) in most cases might be neutral, namely it might not impact genomic function, epigenetic variation could have a direct impact on genome function, and through this might affect the fitness of an organism to specific environmental conditions
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