Analysis of the relationship between chromosomal structural variation (synteny breaks) and 3D-chromatin architectural changes among closely related species has the potential to reveal causes and correlates between chromosomal change and chromatin remodeling. Of note, contrary to extensive studies in animal species, the pace and pattern of chromatin architectural changes following the speciation of plants remain unexplored; moreover, there is little exploration of the occurrence of synteny breaks in the context of multiple genome topological hierarchies within the same model species.
Here we used Hi-C and epigenomic analyses to characterize and compare the profiles of hierarchical chromatin architectural features in representative species of the cotton tribe (
Our findings provide insights into the non-random occurrence of epigenomic remodeling relative to the genomic landscape and its evolutionary and functional connections to alterations of hierarchical chromatin architecture, on a known evolutionary timescale.