Methylation Changes in Arabidopsis seed development

There are four major seed developmental phases in Arabidopsis seed development: morphogenesis, maturation, dormancy and germination. What methylation changes occurring in the different phases, if any, remains unknown. To uncover the possible role of DNA methylation in different parts of the seed, we characterized the methylome of four major seed developmental phases of Arabidopsis using Illumina sequencing: global stage (glob) and linear cotyledon stage (lcot) for morphogenesis phase; mature green stage (mg) and post mature green stage (pmg) for maturation phase; dry seed (dry) for dormancy phase; leaves (leaf) from 4 week plant for vegetative tissues. Illumina sequencing of bisulfite-converted genomic DNA from six seed developmental stages in Arabidopsis: global stage (glob), linear cotyledon stage (lcot), mature green stage (mg), post mature green stage (pmg), dry seed (dry) and leaves (leaf) from 4 week plant.

拟南芥（Arabidopsis）的种子发育共包含四大核心阶段：形态发生期、成熟期、休眠期与萌发期。不同发育阶段的甲基化变化（若存在）目前仍未明确。为探究DNA甲基化（DNA methylation）在种子不同区域的潜在作用，我们采用Illumina测序（Illumina sequencing）技术对拟南芥四大种子发育阶段的甲基化组（methylome）进行了表征：其中形态发生期涵盖球形胚阶段（glob）与线性子叶阶段（lcot）；成熟期涵盖成熟绿胚阶段（mg）与成熟绿胚后阶段（pmg）；休眠期对应干燥种子阶段（dry）；营养组织则取自4周龄植株的叶片（leaf）。本研究对拟南芥6个种子发育阶段的亚硫酸氢盐转化基因组DNA（bisulfite-converted genomic DNA）开展了Illumina测序，所涉阶段包括：球形胚阶段（glob）、线性子叶阶段（lcot）、成熟绿胚阶段（mg）、成熟绿胚后阶段（pmg）、干燥种子阶段（dry）以及4周龄植株的叶片（leaf）。