Small RNAs guide histone methylation in Arabidopsis embryos

  1. Robert A. Martienssen1
  1. 1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, USA;
  2. 2Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa Research and Development Center, Ottawa Ontario K1A 0C6, Canada;
  3. 3Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, USA;
  4. 4Epigenetic Regulations and Seed Development, UMR232, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), Université de Montpellier (UM), 34394 Montpellier, France
  1. Corresponding author: martiens{at}cshl.edu
  • 5 Present address: Department of Biochemistry, University of Otago, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand.

Abstract

Epigenetic reprogramming occurs during gametogenesis as well as during embryogenesis to reset the genome for early development. In flowering plants, many heterochromatic marks are maintained in sperm, but asymmetric DNA methylation is mostly lost. Asymmetric DNA methylation is dependent on small RNA but the re-establishment of silencing in embryo is not well understood. Here we demonstrate that small RNAs direct the histone H3 lysine 9 dimethylation during Arabidopsis thaliana embryonic development, together with asymmetric DNA methylation. This de novo silencing mechanism depends on the catalytic domain of SUVH9, a Su(Var)3-9 homolog thought to be catalytically inactive.

Keywords

Footnotes

  • Supplemental material is available for this article.

  • Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.343871.120.

  • Freely available online through the Genes & Development Open Access option.

  • Received August 19, 2020.
  • Accepted April 16, 2021.

This article, published in Genes & Development, is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

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