{"doi":"10.1101/2023.03.15.532766","title":"An evolutionary epigenetic clock in plants","abstract":"Molecular clocks are the basis for dating the divergence between lineages over macro-evolutionary timescales (~10 5 -10 8 years). However, classical DNA-based clocks tick too slowly to inform us about the recent past. Here, we demonstrate that stochastic DNA methylation changes at a subset of cytosines in plant genomes possess a clock-like behavior. This ‘epimutation-clock’ is orders of magnitude faster than DNA-based clocks and enables phylogenetic explorations on a scale of years to centuries. We show experimentally that epimutation-clocks recapitulate known topologies and branching times of intra-species phylogenetic trees in the selfing plant A. thaliana and the clonal seagrass Z. marina , which represent two major modes of plant reproduction. This discovery will open new possibilities for high-resolution temporal studies of plant biodiversity.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2023,"id":392251,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9421,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1165517,"name":"Nan Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-8441-2242","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":760871,"name":"Li Yu","orcid":"0000-0001-6872-2665","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1165518,"name":"Razibuddin Ahmed Hazarika","orcid":"0000-0002-7759-7250","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1165519,"name":"Chunmei Yu","orcid":"0000-0003-0547-7011","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1165520,"name":"Han Byul Jang","orcid":"0000-0002-5826-1698","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":542536,"name":"Lisa M. Smith","orcid":"0000-0003-2364-8187","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":616073,"name":"Jurriaan Ton","orcid":"0000-0002-8512-2802","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":271361,"name":"Liang Liu","orcid":"0000-0003-0568-4264","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1165521,"name":"John J. Stachowicz","orcid":"0000-0003-2735-0564","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1165522,"name":"Thorsten B. H. Reusch","orcid":"0000-0002-8961-4337","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":258660,"name":"Robert J. Schmitz","orcid":"0000-0001-7538-6663","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":258659,"name":"Frank Johannes","orcid":"0000-0002-7962-2907","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":647589,"name":"Nan Yao","orcid":"0000-0002-2045-5462","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":39,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:18:52.232318Z","pmid":"36993545","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}