Journal
EPIGENETICS
Volume 17, Issue 6, Pages 625-641Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC
DOI: 10.1080/15592294.2021.1943863
Keywords
Pb; parus major; pollution; environmental epigenetics; ecological epigenetics; ecotoxicology
Funding
- Academy of Finland [265859]
- Kone Foundation [28-1274]
- Finnish Cultural Foundation [00170737]
- Turku University Foundation [12171]
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The study found that post-natal exposure to anthropogenic heavy metals can affect the methylation levels of development-related genes in a wild bird population. The results showed that pollution-related changes in DNA methylation were not genome-wide, but enriched for genes underlying developmental processes. However, modeling variance in CpGs proved to be challenging.
Anthropogenic pollution is known to negatively influence an organism's physiology, behaviour, and fitness. Epigenetic regulation, such as DNA methylation, has been hypothesized as a potential mechanism to mediate such effects, yet studies in wild species are lacking. We first investigated the effects of early-life exposure to the heavy metal lead (Pb) on DNA methylation levels in a wild population of great tits (Parus major), by experimentally exposing nestlings to Pb at environmentally relevant levels. Secondly, we compared nestling DNA methylation from a population exposed to long-term heavy metal pollution (close to a copper smelter), where birds suffer from pollution-related decrease in food quality, and a control population. For both comparisons, the analysis of about one million CpGs covering most of the annotated genes revealed that pollution-related changes in DNA methylation were not genome wide, but enriched for genes underlying developmental processes. However, the results were not consistent when using binomial or beta binomial regression highlighting the difficulty of modelling variance in CpGs. Our study indicates that post-natal anthropogenic heavy metal exposure can affect methylation levels of development related genes in a wild bird population.
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