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The caste- and sex-specific DNA methylome of the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis

Epigenetic inheritance plays an important role in mediating alternative phenotype in highly social species. In order to gain a greater understanding of epigenetic effects in societies, we investigated DNA methylation in the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis. Termites are the most ancient social insect...

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Autores principales: Glastad, Karl M., Gokhale, Kaustubh, Liebig, Jürgen, Goodisman, Michael A. D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5111047/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27848993
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep37110
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author Glastad, Karl M.
Gokhale, Kaustubh
Liebig, Jürgen
Goodisman, Michael A. D.
author_facet Glastad, Karl M.
Gokhale, Kaustubh
Liebig, Jürgen
Goodisman, Michael A. D.
author_sort Glastad, Karl M.
collection PubMed
description Epigenetic inheritance plays an important role in mediating alternative phenotype in highly social species. In order to gain a greater understanding of epigenetic effects in societies, we investigated DNA methylation in the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis. Termites are the most ancient social insects, and developmentally distinct from highly-studied, hymenopteran social insects. We used replicated bisulfite-sequencing to investigate patterns of DNA methylation in both sexes and among castes of Z. nevadensis. We discovered that Z. nevadensis displayed some of the highest levels of DNA methylation found in insects. We also found strong differences in methylation between castes. Methylated genes tended to be uniformly and highly expressed demonstrating the antiquity of associations between intragenic methylation and gene expression. Differentially methylated genes were more likely to be alternatively spliced than not differentially methylated genes, and possessed considerable enrichment for development-associated functions. We further observed strong overrepresentation of multiple transcription factor binding sites and miRNA profiles associated with differential methylation, providing new insights into the possible function of DNA methylation. Overall, our results show that DNA methylation is widespread and associated with caste differences in termites. More generally, this study provides insights into the function of DNA methylation and the success of insect societies.
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spelling pubmed-51110472016-11-23 The caste- and sex-specific DNA methylome of the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis Glastad, Karl M. Gokhale, Kaustubh Liebig, Jürgen Goodisman, Michael A. D. Sci Rep Article Epigenetic inheritance plays an important role in mediating alternative phenotype in highly social species. In order to gain a greater understanding of epigenetic effects in societies, we investigated DNA methylation in the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis. Termites are the most ancient social insects, and developmentally distinct from highly-studied, hymenopteran social insects. We used replicated bisulfite-sequencing to investigate patterns of DNA methylation in both sexes and among castes of Z. nevadensis. We discovered that Z. nevadensis displayed some of the highest levels of DNA methylation found in insects. We also found strong differences in methylation between castes. Methylated genes tended to be uniformly and highly expressed demonstrating the antiquity of associations between intragenic methylation and gene expression. Differentially methylated genes were more likely to be alternatively spliced than not differentially methylated genes, and possessed considerable enrichment for development-associated functions. We further observed strong overrepresentation of multiple transcription factor binding sites and miRNA profiles associated with differential methylation, providing new insights into the possible function of DNA methylation. Overall, our results show that DNA methylation is widespread and associated with caste differences in termites. More generally, this study provides insights into the function of DNA methylation and the success of insect societies. Nature Publishing Group 2016-11-16 /pmc/articles/PMC5111047/ /pubmed/27848993 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep37110 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Glastad, Karl M.
Gokhale, Kaustubh
Liebig, Jürgen
Goodisman, Michael A. D.
The caste- and sex-specific DNA methylome of the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis
title The caste- and sex-specific DNA methylome of the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis
title_full The caste- and sex-specific DNA methylome of the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis
title_fullStr The caste- and sex-specific DNA methylome of the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis
title_full_unstemmed The caste- and sex-specific DNA methylome of the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis
title_short The caste- and sex-specific DNA methylome of the termite Zootermopsis nevadensis
title_sort caste- and sex-specific dna methylome of the termite zootermopsis nevadensis
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5111047/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27848993
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep37110
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