Conserved methylome of recently diverged A.thaliana accessions (haplogroup1 lines)

We analyzed the genomes and methylomes of 13 natural mutation accumulation lines from a population that likely has diverged for more than a century and has grown in varying environments. We found that both patterns and rates of epigenetic methylome variation were highly reminiscent of those of greenhouse-grown lines. The epigenetic variation reflected genetic distance, and differences accumulated non-linearly as a function of time, which indicated that environment-induced changes are only minor contributors to heritable epigenetic variation