Epigenetic variation in lingonberries

Sikdar, Arindam (2021) Epigenetic variation in lingonberries. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

Epigenetic variation plays a role in developmental gene regulation, response to the environment, and in natural variation of gene expression levels. The purpose of the study is to investigate cytosine methylation and secondary compounds of lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) among cutting-propagated cultivar Erntedank (ED) and its tissue-culture plants (NC, LC). This was analyzed by using Methylation Sensitive Amplified Polymorphism (MSAP) where the primers were cleaved in cytosine residues at 5'-CCGG-3' sites in CpG-islands. In leaf regenerants (LC1), we observed highest methylated sites from all primer combinations (108 bands), with their highest variation in secondary metabolites. We measured that tissue-cultured plants showed higher methylation bands than maternal plants. For instance, we identified the mother plant ED exhibited 79 bands of methylation, which is comparatively low. On the other hand, we observed the highest total phenolic content in (NC3) but LC1 represents low phenolic content. Our study showed more methylation in micropropagated plants (NC1, NC2, NC3 and LC1) than those derived from ED cutting cultivar where methylation was not present. On the contrary, we observed higher secondary metabolites in cutting cultivar ED but comparatively less in micropropagated plants (NC1, NC2, NC3 LC1). Hence, our study confirmed that higher methylation sites observed in micropropagated plants and less amount of secondary metabolites appears.

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