Methylation patterns for parents and offspring
Of the 1,854 DMCs identified between parental environments, 724
(39.05%) maintained the same methylation profile (either hyper or
hypomethylated relatively to the other environment) in the offspring
reared in an environment matching their parent, but changed in the
offspring reared in a mismatching environment and were classified as
environmentally-induced epialleles. Of the remaining 1,130 DMCs, 98
(5.28% of the total) maintained
the parental methylation patterns in the offspring regardless of their
own rearing environment, of which five (scaffold: NW_016094248.1,
position: 1049469; scaffold: NW_016094269.1., position: 1135514;
scaffold: NW_016094316.1, position: 636543; scaffold: NW_016094324.1,
position: 879262; scaffold: NW_016094376.1, position: 917192) had less
than 10% change in methylation score across all experimental groups
(classified as potentially intergenerational) (Table 1).
Three of the five DMCs which
maintained the parental methylation patterns on the offspring were
significantly influenced by parental environment (Table 2; Fig. 3).
When analysed separately by environment-specific context, 30 DMCs in the
offspring originated from enriched environment, and 19 in the offspring
originated from poor environment maintained their methylation score
relatively to its parents regardless of the offspring environment within
less than 10% change.