Global epigenetic and metabolic changes accompany the alterations in fruit size and shape of Cucurbita pepo L. intra-species grafting
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Agricultural Science, Plant Science
- Keywords
- Cucurbitaceae, MSAP methylation sensitive amplified polymorphisms markers, phenolics, miRNAs, fruit morphology, epigenetic
- Copyright
- © 2017 Xanthopoulou et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Global epigenetic and metabolic changes accompany the alterations in fruit size and shape of Cucurbita pepo L. intra-species grafting. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3389v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3389v1
Abstract
To further understand the impact of grafting on fruit characteristics and to comprehend the mechanisms involved in graft-induced changes we studied homo- and hetero- grafted Cucurbita pepo cultivars (cv.) that vary in fruit size and shape. C. pepo cv. ‘Munchkin’ (small fruit) and cv. ‘Big Moose’ (large fruit) as well as cv. ‘Round green’ (round fruit) and cv. ‘Princess’ (elongated fruit) were homografted and reciprocally heterografted. The results show significant changes in fruit size when ‘Big Moose’ was grafted onto ‘Munchkin’ rootstocks in comparison to homo-grafted controls. Moderate changes in fruit shape were observed when grafting of cv. ‘Round green’ and cv. ‘Princess’ were performed. This is the first report of such phenotypic changes after intra-species/inter-cultivar grafting in Cucurbitaceae. Additionally, we found significant changes in i) secondary metabolite profile, ii) global DNA methylation pattern and iii) miRNA expression patterns in grafted scions and iv) DNA methylation on graft-induced phenotypic changes in grafted plants. Our results contribute to further understanding graft-induced effects on fruit morphology in intra-species grafting. Furthermore, our results pave the way for understanding the role of phenolic metabolites and epigenetic molecular mechanisms on the phenotypic changes recorded.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Example of electropherograms produced in the ABI 3730xl capillary electrophoresis automated sequencer
Supplementary Figure 1: Example of electropherograms produced in the ABI 3730xl capillary electrophoresis automated sequencer. Individual electropherograms correspond to the two control plants (‘Munchkin’ top left panel and ‘Big Moose’ top right panel) and to two heterografted plants [‘Big Moose’ (RS) x ‘Munchkin’ (SC); bottom left panel and one ‘Munchkin’ (RS) x ‘Big Moose’ (SC); bottom right panel]. Each grafted plant is represented by two electropherograms (panel) corresponding to the two isoschizomer combinations employed for MSAP analysis (EcoRI/HpaII; HpaII and EcoRI/MspI; MspI). In each electropherogram the horizontal axis represents fragment size (bp) while the vertical axis represents relative peak (fragment) fluorescence intensity. The blue horizontal line indicates range of fragment size (150–500bp; not shown).
Sequences of adapters used for the EcoRI and HpaII/MspI ligation step, and for the pre-selective (EcoRI+1, HpaII/MspI+1) and selective (EcoRI+3, HpaII/MspI+3) amplifications
Table S1. Sequences of adapters used for the EcoRI and HpaII/MspI ligation step, and for the pre-selective (EcoRI+1, HpaII/MspI+1) and selective (EcoRI+3, HpaII/MspI+3) amplifications.