Study of the Faux in the Verzy Forest (Fagus sylvatica variety tortuosa) - Supporting information

The objective of this project is help solve the mystery of the twisted beech phenotype, a mutant dwarf tree - Fagus sylvatica variety tortuosa – so far reported in several forests in France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux_de_Verzy). The most famous stand is located in Verzy (25km south of Reims, France) where hundreds of Faux (their given name from the old French "fagus") characterized by their tortuous trunks and branches pending to the ground, have been preserved by the national forest office. More precisely, we aim at discovering the molecular bases of the mutation by comparing (i) the genomes of wild types (straight trees) and dwarf mutants, and (ii) genomic features (transcriptome, methylomes, mobilomes, small RNA populations, genomes) of six genotypes displaying both the mutant and wild type phenotypes. We hypothesized that the reversion of the mutation, resulting in a straight branch standing up from the typical igloo shape of the mutant, is caused by a somatic mutation in or near the mutated locus.