Background: DNA methylation, with a cryptic role in genome stability, gene transcription and expression, is involved in the drought response process in plants, but the complex regulatory mechanism is still largely unknown.
Results: Here, we performed whole-genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) and identified long non-coding RNAs on cotton leaves under drought stress and re-watering treatments. We obtained 31,223 and 30,997 differentially methylated regions (representing 2.48% of the genome) after drought stress and re-watering treatments, respectively. Our data also showed that three sequence contexts, including mCpG, mCHG, mCHH, all presented a hyper-methylation pattern under drought stress and were nearly restored to normal levels after the re-watering treatment. Among all the methylation variations, asymmetric CHH methylation was the most consistent with external environments, suggesting that methylation/demethylation in a CHH context may constitute a novel epigenetic modification in response to drought stress. Combined with the targets of long non-coding RNAs, we found that long non-coding RNAs may mediate variations in methylation patterns by splicing into microRNAs. Furthermore, the many hormone-related genes with methylation variations suggested that plant hormones might be a potential mechanism in the drought response.
Conclusions: Future crop-improvement strategies may benefit by taking into account not only the DNA genetic variations in cotton varieties but also the epigenetic modifications of the genome.
Keywords: Drought stress; Epigenome modifications; Long non-coding RNAs; Methylomes; Upland cotton.