Zea mays Epigenomics. Zea mays

DNA methylation is a chromatin modification that is sometimes associated with epigenetic regulation of gene expression. As DNA methylation can be reversible at some loci, it is possible that methylation patterns may change within an organism that is subjected to environmental stress. In order to assess the effects of abiotic stress on DNA methylation patterns in maize (Zea mays), we subjected seedlings to heat, cold and UV stress treatments. Tissue was later collected from individual adult plants that had been subjected to stress or control treatments and used to perform DNA methylation profiling to determine whether there were consistent changes in DNA methylation triggered by specific stress treatments. The DNA methylation profiling was performed by immunoprecipitation of methylated DNA followed by microarray hybridization to allow for quantitative estimates of DNA methylation abundance throughout the low-copy portion of the maize genome. By comparing the DNA methylation profiles of each individual plant to the average of the control plants it was possible to identify regions of the genome with variable DNA methylation. However, we did not find evidence of consistent DNA methylation changes resulting from the stress treatments used in this study. Instead, the data suggest that there is a low-rate of stochastic variation that is present in both control and stressed plants. Methylation profiles in flag leaf tissue of maize inbred lines under various stress conditions using a custom 1.4M feature NimbleGen array. Overall design: Methylation profiles of flag leaf tissue from 18 B73 inbred lines that underwent various stresses as seedlings. This includes 5 cold treatment plants, 4 UV treated plants, 3 heat treated plants, and 6 total control plants (no stress). All methylation profiling was done on a custon 3x1.4M NimbleGen array platform (meDIP-chip).