Abstract
Environmental change is a major challenge to plants. Yupeng Zhang investigated the epigenetic memory of elevated temperature in different ecotypes of Woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) and the potential machinery that establishes this memory. It was determined how the F. vesca transcriptome and methylome adjust to elevated temperature when plants were exposed to different temperatures only during their reproduction period. The elevated temperature induced changes in flowering time, stolon number, and petiole length in one or more ecotypes, indicating an epigenetic memory in F. vesca. Overall, DNA was hypermethylated following asexual reproduction but hypomethylated following sexual reproduction. The transcriptomes during sexual and asexual reproduction was also analysed. A small number of differentially expressed genes were shared between sexually and asexually reproduced individuals. Most genes related to the epigenetic machinery were upregulated in the asexual progeny propagated at elevated temperature, while these genes were downregulated in the sexual progeny. Up to 20% of the differentially methylated genes showed significant gene expression changes in the asexual experiment, whereas this ratio dropped to less than 1% in the sexual experiment. Taken together, the findings show that an epigenetic memory to elevated temperature can be established in F. vesca following both asexual and sexual reproduction.
List of papers
Paper I. Temperature-induced methylome changes during asexual reproduction trigger transcriptomic and phenotypic changes in Fragaria vesca. Yupeng Zhang, Guangxun Fan, Tuomas Toivainen, Torstein Tengs, Igor Yakovlev, Paal Krokene, Timo Hytönen, Carl Gunnar Fossdal and Paul E. Grini. Submitted manuscript. To be published. The paper is not available in DUO awaiting publishing. Preprint available in bioRxiv: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.09.511489 |
Paper II. Methylome, transcriptome and phenotype change induced by temperature during sexual reproduction in Fragaria vesca. Yupeng Zhang, Tuomas Toivainen, Kathryn Mackenzie, Igor Yakovlev, Paal Krokene, Timo Hytönen, Paul E. Grini and Carl Gunnar Fossdal. Manuscript. To be published. The paper is not available in DUO awaiting publishing. |
Paper III. Transcriptome analysis reveal major differences induced by different temperature sums during asexual and sexual reprodutions in Fragaria vesca. Yupeng Zhang, Marcos Viejo Somoano, Igor Yakovlev, Torstein Tengs, Paal Krokene, Timo Hytönen, Paul Grini and Carl Gunnar Fossdal. Manuscript. To be published. The paper is not available in DUO awaiting publishing. |