MethylRIDE: Charting DNA methylation reprogramming of Ice Age horses in the face of global climate change and extinction

MethylRIDE: Charting DNA methylation reprogramming of Ice Age horses in the face of global climate change and extinctionAdaptation is one of the most essential processes in biology, by which species become fit to their environment. Following Charles Darwin, adaptation appears as the result of natural selection acting upon heritable variation.

However, recent epigenetic discoveries have established the capacity of non-genetic changes in the regulatory layers of gene expression to shape our traits, including our medical phenotype.

As such, our realized phenotype can no longer be considered as the sole product of our genome, but more as the combinatory by-product of our genome and epigenomes.

The outcome of natural selection, which favors phenotypes associated to a higher reproductive success in a given environment, might, thus, be at least partly influenced by epigenetic changes. Yet, the possible participation of epigenetic changes in the process of biological adaptation is generally overlooked.

MethylRIDE will take advantage of the preservation of ancient DNA molecules in paleontological material to track the changes in DNA methylation profiles of Ice Age horses, as they faced changing climatic conditions and selection pressures and, ultimately, became extinct.

The unique combination of novel experimental and computational techniques developed will help assess, for the first time, the role of epigenetics in long-term adaptive strategies of large vertebrates in response to rapid climate change, and more generally the role of epigenetic change as a significant evolutionary force.