2026-04-17T16:06:22Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/request

oai:recercat.cat:2072/5212852024-12-23T14:49:35Zcom_2072_352787com_2072_351515com_2072_1741col_2072_352789

Epigenetics and the city: non-parallel DNA methylation modifications across pairs of urban-forest Great tit populations Caizergues, Aude E. Grégoire, Arnaud Szulkin, Marta Senar, Juan Carlos Charmantier, Anne Perrier, Charles Mallerenga carbonera ADN Passeriformes Adaptació animal Pardals Fenotip Metilació 59 Identifying the molecular mechanisms involved in rapid adaptation to novel environments and determining their predictability are central questions in evolutionary biology and pressing issues due to rapid global changes. Complementary to genetic responses to selection, faster epigenetic variations such as modifications of DNA methylation may play a substantial role in rapid adaptation. In the context of rampant urbanization, joint examinations of genomic and epigenomic mechanisms are still lacking. Here, we investigated genomic (SNP) and epigenomic (CpG methylation) responses to urban life in a passerine bird, the Great tit (Parus major). To test whether urban evolution is predictable (i.e. parallel) or involves mostly nonparallel molecular processes among cities, we analysed both SNP and CpG methylation variations across three distinct pairs of city and forest Great tit populations in Europe. Our analyses reveal a polygenic response to urban life, with both many genes putatively under weak divergent selection and multiple differentially methylated regions (DMRs) between forest and city great tits. DMRs mainly overlapped transcription start sites and promotor regions, suggesting their importance in modulating gene expression. Both genomic and epigenomic outliers were found in genomic regions enriched for genes with biological functions related to the nervous system, immunity, or behavioural, hormonal and stress responses. Interestingly, comparisons across the three pairs of city-forest populations suggested little parallelism in both genetic and epigenetic responses. Our results confirm, at both the genetic and epigenetic levels, hypotheses of polygenic and largely nonparal 2021-12-01 info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion http://hdl.handle.net/2072/521285 https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.13334 eng Evolutionary Applications, 15 (2022), p. 149-165 L'accés als continguts d'aquest document queda condicionat a l'acceptació de les condicions d'ús establertes per la següent llicència Creative Commons:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2022 The Authors. Evolutionary Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess 17 p. application/pdf RECERCAT (Dipòsit de la Recerca de Catalunya)