Meeting Abstract
Seasonal timing of reproduction in plants and animals is an important trait closely associated with fitness but the molecular genetic mechanism behind seasonal timing is not well understood. I will review some recent attempts at understanding the molecular genetic mechanism behind timing of reproduction where we have used within indivdual (longitudinal) sampling to examine changes in DNA methylation across the breeding season using great tits (Parus major) as a model organism. Our recent work demonstrate both temporal genome wide change in methylation over the breeding season and also rapid changes in methylaiton in the regulatory region of some previously identified reproductive genes around the date of first egg laying in this species. These findings demonstrate and further establish that epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation can be an important mechanism in regulating seasonal timing of reproduction.
