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Chromatin Immunoprecipitation Assay for the Identification of Arabidopsis Protein-DNA Interactions In Vivo
Published on: January 14, 2016
A cis cold memory element and a trans epigenome reader mediate Polycomb silencing of FLC by vernalization in
Wenya Yuan1,2, Xiao Luo1, Zicong Li1
1Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, CAS Center for Excellence of Molecular Plant Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
Abstract:
Some plants acquire competence to flower in spring after experiencing a seasonal temperature drop-winter cold, in a process termed vernalization. In Arabidopsis thaliana, prolonged exposure to cold induces epigenetic silencing of the potent floral repressor locus FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) by Polycomb group (PcG) proteins, and this silencing is stably maintained in subsequent growth and development upon return to warm temperatures. Here we show that a cis-regulatory DNA element in the nucleation region for PcG silencing at FLC and two homologous trans-acting epigenome readers, VAL1 and VAL2, control vernalization-mediated FLC silencing. The sequence-specific readers recognize both the cis element (termed the cold memory element) and a repressive mark, trimethylation of histone H3 at lysine 27 (H3K27me3), and directly associate with LIKE HETEROCHROMATIN PROTEIN 1 (LHP1), leading to establishment of the H3K27me3 peak in the nucleation region at FLC during vernalization. Thus, our work describes a mechanism for PcG-mediated silencing by a DNA sequence-specific epigenome reader.
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