Combinations of maternal-specific repressive epigenetic marks in the endosperm control seed dormancy
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Abstract
Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2)-mediated trimethylation of histone H3 on lysine 27 (H3K27me3) and methylation of histone 3 on lysine 9 (H3K9me) are two repressive epigenetic modifications that are typically localized in distinct regions of the genome. For reasons unknown, however, they co-occur in some organisms and special tissue types. In this study, we show that maternal alleles marked by H3K27me3 in the Arabidopsis endosperm were targeted by the H3K27me3 demethylase REF6 and became activated during germination. In contrast, maternal alleles marked by H3K27me3, H3K9me2, and CHG methylation (CHGm) are likely to be protected from REF6 targeting and remained silenced. Our study unveils that combinations of different repressive epigenetic modifications time a key adaptive trait by modulating access of REF6.
Data availability
All data generated in this study were deposited to the Gene Expression Omnibus and are available under the accession number GSE158907.
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Combinations of maternal-specific repressive epigenetic marks in the endosperm control seed dormancyNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE158907.
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Arabidopsis thaliana seed germination timecourseNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus.
Article and author information
Author details
Juan Santos-González
Funding
Vetenskapsrådet (2017-04119)
- Claudia Köhler
Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse (2018-0206)
- Claudia Köhler
Goran Gustafsson Foundation for Research in Natural Sciences and Medicine
- Claudia Köhler
The Human Frontier Science Program (LT000162/2018-L)
- Hikaru Sato
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Daniel Zilberman, Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Austria
Version history
- Received: November 4, 2020
- Preprint posted: November 12, 2020 (view preprint)
- Accepted: August 23, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: August 24, 2021 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: August 31, 2021 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2021, Sato et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Combinations of maternal-specific repressive epigenetic marks in the endosperm control seed dormancy
eLife 10:e64593.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.64593
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