Enzymatic Methylation Sequencing of Wt and mutant Arabidopsis plants grown at elevated carbon dioxide levels

Plant growth response to elevated levels of CO2 in the environment needs to be deeply investigated to understand the impact of rising global carbon dioxide levels. While the response of plants directly exposed to elevated CO2 is relatively well-studied, the trans-generational impact of elevated CO2 exposure in plants returned to ambient conditions is unexplored. In this study, we show that plants develop a trans-generational memory of elevated CO2 exposure in the next generation even after returning the plants to ambient CO2 levels. By analysing whole genome methylation, we identified that cytosine DNA methylation mechanisms are key to both initiate and maintain this epigenetic memory across generations. Grant ID: EF-1921724 Grant Title: Revealing how epigenetic inheritance governs the environmental challenge response with transformative 3D genomics and machine learning Funding Source: National Science Foundation (NSF) Overall design: Examination of genome-wide methylated cytosines in Wt and mutant Arabidopsis plants grown at ambient or elevated carbon dioxide environment using Enzymatic Methylation sequencing.