Reduced-representation bisulfite sequencing of zebra finch auditory lobule after song playback

Exposure to song playback leads to acute changes in gene expression in the auditory forebrain of zebra finches, and repeated exposure to the same stimulus leads to habituation of this response. The goal of this experiment was to look for evidence of specific changes in DNA methylation either immediately after exposure to 30 minutes of novel song playback (novel, n=6), or one day after 3 hours of exposure to a novel stimulus (trained, n=6), a condition that results in habituation to that stimulus. A control group (silence, n=6) was housed identically, but received no song playbacks. Another control group (aviary, n=6) was taken directly from a group aviary. Genomic DNA was purified from auditory lobules by phenol chloroform extraction,RRBS libraries were prepared from Msp1/Taq1 digests, and 50bp single-end reads were acquired via Illumina 4000 sequencing. Library prep, sequencing, and quality control analyses were performed by Amelie Kuchler under the direction of Christoph Bock (Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna).