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Seminars
October 9, 2024
12:00 pm via zoom
Dr. Lily Peck
" Can DNA Methylation Help Us Understand Climate-Adaption in Trees? "
The idea that forests and climate are intrinsically linked is a long-held view, both in the traditional knowledge of indigenous communities, and in early western society. Woody plants create the ecosystems they occupy and shape their biodiversity, be they forests, tree-savannahs, or chapparal. Today’s rapidly warming climate threatens long-lived plant species with maladaptation to their future environments. Plants show enormous phenotypic diversity in response to environmental change, caused by genotypic variation or epigenetic mechanisms that influence behaviour of the underlying DNA sequence. We are addressing the important question of whether epigenetics, and particularly DNA methylation, affect ecologically important traits in trees. We investigate methylation of genes and transposable elements associated with drought-response phenotypes in a California endemic oak, Quercus lobata Née. We use long-read genomes, methylomes, and chromatin landscape, measured in half-sib progeny from two Q. lobata genotypes. Preliminary data suggests that drought stress results in extensive remodelling of tree methylomes. Understanding the extent to which ecological traits can be manipulated by epigenetic processes provides a promising research avenue in conservation genomics and restoration ecology of natural tree populations.
Meeting ID: 998 6090 8499
Host: Victoria Sork, Distinguished Professor & Botanical Director