Meeting Abstract

S1.2-3  Saturday, Jan. 4 11:00  Dynamics of DNA methylation in continuous trait variation, seasonal change, and social environment. ALVARADO, S*; SZYF, M; RAJAKUMAR, R; STOREY, KB; ABOUHEIF, E; FERNALD, R; Stanford University, Palo Alto; McGill University, Montreal; McGill University, Montreal; Carleton University, Ottawa; McGill University, Montreal; Stanford University, Palo Alto salvarad@stanford.edu

All animals have developed a variety of strategies to adapt to a dynamic environment by adjusting their development, physiology and/or behavior. However, little is known of the underlying molecular mechanisms and their plasticity in regulating such phenomena. One epigenetic mechanism, the reversible covalent modification of DNA by methylation, has been extensively characterized to regulate gene function through transcriptional repression. While this mechanism has been classically studied in cancer and disease states, few studies have examined the role that dynamic DNA methylation in adult tissues could play in natural biological phenomena, thus emphasizing its importance to other fields of organismal and ecological biology. Here I will discuss in three separate animal models where DNA methylation is shown to play a dynamic role in determining the continuum of a trait (in carpenter ants), seasonal change (in adult hibernating squirrels), and social environments (in adult male African cichlids). In addition to characterizing these changes at the genomic level we further resolve these changes to the transcriptional regulation of individual genes and their function within different tissues. While each of these animals may adapt to different environmental cues, they all share similar mechanisms in regulating gene function, thus underlining the importance of DNA methylation in responding to environmental signals in general and at different stages of life.