title: Century-scale methylome stability in a recently diverged Arabidopsis thaliana lineage.
abstract: There has been much excitement about the possibility that exposure to specific environments can induce an ecological memory in the form of whole-sale, genome-wide epigenetic changes that are maintained over many generations. In the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, numerous heritable DNA methylation differences have been identified in greenhouse-grown isogenic lines, but it remains unknown how natural, highly variable environments affect the rate and spectrum of such changes. Here we present detailed methylome analyses in a geographically dispersed A. thaliana population that constitutes a collection of near-isogenic lines, diverged for at least a century from a common ancestor. Methylome variation largely reflected genetic distance, and was in many aspects similar to that of lines raised in uniform conditions. Thus, even when plants are grown in varying and diverse natural sites, genome-wide epigenetic variation accumulates mostly in a clock-like manner, and epigenetic divergence thus parallels the pattern of genome-wide DNA sequence divergence.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hagmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Claude
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Becker
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Jonas
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: Machine Learning and Computational Biology Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany; European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Stegle
authors.affiliation: The Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Gatersleben, Germany.
authors.forename: Rhonda C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Developmental Biology, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Korbinian
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schneeberger
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Joffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fitz
authors.affiliation: The Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Gatersleben, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Altmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America.
authors.forename: Joy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bergelson
authors.affiliation: Machine Learning and Computational Biology Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany; Center for Bioinformatics (ZBIT), Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Karsten
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Borgwardt
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Detlef
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Weigel
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis; D019175:DNA Methylation / Q000235:genetics*; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements / Q000235:genetics; D018744:DNA, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D014644:Genetic Variation; D018745:Genome, Plant; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D018744:DNA, Plant