DNA methylation variation in Arabidopsis has a genetic basis and shows evidence of local adaptation

Epigenome modulation in response to the environment potentially provides a mechanism for organisms to adapt, both within and between generations. However, neither the extent to which this occurs, nor the molecular mechanisms involved are known. Here we investigate DNA methylation variation in Swedish Arabidopsis thaliana accessions grown at two different temperatures. Environmental effects on DNA methylation were limited to transposons, where CHH methylation was found to increase with temperature. Genome-wide association mapping revealed that the extensive CHH methylation variation was strongly associated with genetic variants in both cis and trans, including a major trans-association close to the DNA methyltransferase CMT2. Unlike CHH methylation, CpG gene body methylation (GBM) on the coding region of genes was not affected by growth temperature, but was instead strongly correlated with the latitude of origin. Accessions from colder regions had higher levels of GBM for a significant fraction of the genome, and this was correlated with elevated transcription levels for the genes affected. Genome-wide association mapping revealed that this effect was largely due to trans-acting loci, a significant fraction of which showed evidence of local adaptation. These findings constitute the first direct link between DNA methylation and adaptation to the environment, and provide a basis for further dissecting how environmentally driven and genetically determined epigenetic variation interact and influence organismal fitness.Comment: 38 pages 4 figure

Cereal Domestication and Evolution of Branching: Evidence for Soft Selection in the Tb1 Orthologue of Pearl Millet (Pennisetum glaucum [L.] R. Br.)

BACKGROUND: During the Neolithic revolution, early farmers altered plant development to domesticate crops. Similar traits were often selected independently in different wild species; yet the genetic basis of this parallel phenotypic evolution remains elusive. Plant architecture ranks among these target traits composing the domestication syndrome. We focused on the reduction of branching which occurred in several cereals, an adaptation known to rely on the major gene Teosinte-branched1 (Tb1) in maize. We investigate the role of the Tb1 orthologue (Pgtb1) in the domestication of pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), an African outcrossing cereal. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Gene cloning, expression profiling, QTL mapping and molecular evolution analysis were combined in a comparative approach between pearl millet and maize. Our results in pearl millet support a role for PgTb1 in domestication despite important differences in the genetic basis of branching adaptation in that species compared to maize (e.g. weaker effects of PgTb1). Genetic maps suggest this pattern to be consistent in other cereals with reduced branching (e.g. sorghum, foxtail millet). Moreover, although the adaptive sites underlying domestication were not formerly identified, signatures of selection pointed to putative regulatory regions upstream of both Tb1 orthologues in maize and pearl millet. However, the signature of human selection in the pearl millet Tb1 is much weaker in pearl millet than in maize. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results suggest that some level of parallel evolution involved at least regions directly upstream of Tb1 for the domestication of pearl millet and maize. This was unanticipated given the multigenic basis of domestication traits and the divergence of wild progenitor species for over 30 million years prior to human selection. We also hypothesized that regular introgression of domestic pearl millet phenotypes by genes from the wild gene pool could explain why the selective sweep in pearl millet is softer than in maize

Parallélisme évolutif et gènes orthologues (adaptation de la ramifacation lors de domestication des Graminées)

PARIS-BIUSJ-Thèses (751052125) / SudocPARIS-BIUSJ-Physique recherche (751052113) / SudocSudocFranceF

Data from: Polymorphism pattern at a Miniature Inverted-repeat Transposable Element locus downstream of the domestication gene Teosinte-branched1 in wild and domesticated pearl millet

Unraveling the mechanisms involved in adaptation to understand plant morphological evolution is a challenging goal. For crop species, identification of molecular causal polymorphisms involved in domestication traits are central to this issue. Pearl millet, a domesticated grass mostly found in semi-arid areas of Africa and India, is an interesting model to address this topic: the domesticated form shares common derived phenotypes with some other cereals such as a decreased ability to develop basal and axillary branches in comparison with the wild phenotype. Two recent studies have shown that the orthologue of the maize gene Teosinte-Branched1 in pearl millet (PgTb1) was likely involved in branching evolution during domestication and that a Miniature Inverted-repeat Transposable Element (MITE) of the Tuareg family was inserted in the 3'-untranslated region of PgTb1. For a set of 35 wild and domesticated populations, we compared the polymorphism patterns at this MITE and at microsatellite loci. The Tuareg insertion was nearly absent in the wild populations, whereas a strong longitudinal frequency cline was observed in the domesticated populations. The geographic pattern revealed by neutral microsatellite loci clearly demonstrated that isolation by distance does not account for the existence of this cline. However, comparison of population differentiation at the microsatellite and the MITE loci and analyses of the nucleotide polymorphism pattern in the downstream region of PgTb1 did not show evidence that the cline at the MITE locus has been shaped by selection, suggesting the implication of a neutral process. Alternative hypotheses are discussed

Evolution of neutral and flowering genes along pearl millet ([i]Pennisetum glaucum[/i]) domestication

Background : Pearl millet landraces display an important variation in their cycle duration. This diversity contributes to the stability of crop production in the Sahel despite inter-annual rainfall fluctuation. Conservation of phenological diversity is important for the future of pearl millet improvement and sustainable use. Identification of genes contributing to flowering time variation is therefore relevant. In this study we focused on three flowering candidate genes, PgHd3a, PgDwarf8 and PgPHYC. We tested for signatures of past selective events within polymorphism patterns of these three genes that could have been associated with pearl millet domestication and/or landraces differentiation. In order to implement ad hoc neutrality tests, a plausible demographic history of pearl millet domestication was inferred through Approximate Bayesian Computation by using eight neutral STS loci.Results : Domesticated pearl millet exhibited 84% of the nucleotide diversity level found in the wild population. No specific polymorphisms were found either in the wild or in the domestic populations. The Bayesian approach and previous studies suggest that gene flow between wild relatives and domesticated pearl millets is a main factor explaining these results. Early and late landraces did not show significant genetic differentiation at both the neutral and the candidate loci. A positive selection was evidenced in PgHd3a and PgDwarf8 genes of domestic forms but not in the wild population.Conclusion: Our results strongly suggest that PgHd3a and PgDwarf8 were likely targeted by selection during domestication. However, a potential role of any of the three candidate genes in the phenological differentiation between early and late landraces was not supported by our data. Reasons why these results contrast with previous results that have shown a slight but significant association between PgPHYC polymorphisms and variation in flowering time in pearl millet are discussed