Epigenetic and Genetic Variability in Contrasting Latitudinal Fagus sylvatica L. Provenances

Abstract

The adaptive capacity of a species and its population is determined by both genetic and epigenetic variation, which defines the potential for adaptive evolution and plastic response to environmental changes. In this study, we used Methylation Sensitive Amplified Polymorphism (MSAP) and Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP), similar genome-wide profiling techniques, to analyze the epigenetic and genetic variability in European beech provenances from Germany (DE), Spain (ES) and Sweden (SE), representing the latitudinal distribution of the species. In addition, we evaluated the effect of moderate water stress on cytosine methylation dynamics by comparing two latitudinal contrasting provenances. Our analysis revealed that trees from ES showed lower values of epigenetic and genetic diversity than those from DE and SE. Analyses of molecular variance for MSAPs and AFLPs showed that 16% and 15% of the among population variations were associated with epigenetic and genetic variation, respectively. The study of the effect of water stress on cytosine methylation dynamics in seedlings from ES and SE revealed no significant levels of epigenetic differentiation between well-watered and stressed plants. Only 2% of the epigenetic variation was explained by the watering regime in ES without changes in SE. The results support that DNA methylation may play a role in the local adaptation of Fagus sylvatica to environmental variation.

Studying the Genetic and the Epigenetic Diversity of the Endangered Species Juniperus drupacea Labill. towards Safeguarding Its Conservation in Greece

“…Concerning the correlations between genetic and epigenetic distances, we found a nonsignificant negative correlation, contrary to [28], where Fagus sylvatica populations were studied, and to [32], who studied Viola elatior natural populations, as both found significant positive correlations. Furthermore, mean percentage of polymorphic genetic and epigenetic variation was found to be 50.11% and 36.75%, respectively, indicating comparable lower results with previous studies for Prunus avium [10], Pinus nigra [16], Fagus sylvatica [28], and Quercus ilex [31]. AMOVA results partitioned 94% and 99% of epigenetic and epigenetic variation, respectively, within subpopulations, and results were in agreement with previous published studies for F. sylvatica [28], P. avium [10], P. nigra [30], etc.…”

“…Genetic diversity has been traditionally considered as the primary source for biodiversity, evolution, and adaptive capacity. However, in recent years, numerous studies have shown the significant role that epigenetic plays in adaptation ( [7,13,[24][25][26][27][28] and in phenotypic plasticity [7,29]. Variation in DNA methylation may or may not depend on underlying genetic variation in DNA sequences, which further complicates efforts to resolve the role of DNA methylation [9].…”

“…According to Richards [25], there are two main extreme relations between genetic and epigenetic variation that have a profound effect on adaptation. In the light of climatic changes, the in-depth analysis of genetic and epigenetic diversity and their relation is considered crucial for the resilience and adaptation of forest ecosystems [7,28,30].…”

Chemical and Microbial Differences of Root and Rhizosphere Soil among Different Provenances of Fokienia hodginsii

“…The growth traits of trees are shaped by both environmental and genetic factors [46,47]. This study focused on 11 provenances of F. hodginsii, including the local provenances within Fujian Province and the non-local provenances from other provinces.…”

Inferring genetic structure of European beech from observations of spectral phenotypes

“…This resulted in 1,380,310 SNPs across all sampled individuals used in further analyses. To date, patterns of F. sylvatica genetic diversity and structure have been studied with marker-based approaches including allozymes (Gallois et al 1998), AFLP (Pluess and Weber 2012, Guevara et al 2022), microsatellites and, more recently, SNPs in candidate genes (Csilléry et al 2014, Pfenninger et al 2020, Meger et al 2021, Cuervo-Alarcon et al 2021) and whole-genome sequences from limited area of the specie range (Stefanini et al 2023). We are not aware of another study so far that used whole-genome sequences from across the range of F. sylvatica .…”