Diversity of individuals' methylation patterns to different moisture regimes in Einkorn wheat revealed by CRED-RA technique

Abstract

Abstract Among the wild relatives of wheat, diploid species with desirable characteristics have high potential in crop modification. One of the important epigenetic changes that is associated with the pattern of gene expression and causes genetic instability is DNA methylation. The coupled restriction enzyme digestion-random amplification (CRED-RA) technique and five RAPD primers were used to study methylation changes in two Einkorn wheat genotypes including S10 and H9 genotypes and four soil water availability treatments included control, mild, moderate and severe stress (irrigation at 100%, 75%, 50% and 25% of field capacity, respectively) in two stages (14 days after water deficiency and 14 days after re-watering). The experiment was laid out as 2×4 factorial experiment within completely randomized design replicated three times. Measured physiological traits included relative leaf water content, Fv / Fm and stomatal conductance. After 14 days of exposure to drought stress, the results showed that the lowest relative water content of leaves, Fv/Fm and stomatal conductance were related to severe stress treatment. Also, S10 genotype was superior to H9 after application of moisture stress treatments and after re-watering. Different patterns of methylation were observed in different replications of each treatments in response to severe water deficiency, which can be due to the diversity of individuals' response to stress and the specificity of epigenetics changes. Most of the fragments that showed a change in methylation pattern due to water deficiency, after stress removal, returned to the state before stress, which indicates the reversibility of methylation changes in the genome.