Abstract
Summary Plant‐specific EFFECTORS OF TRANSCRIPTION (ET) are characterised by a variable number of highly conserved ET repeats, which are involved in zinc and DNA binding. In addition, ETs share a GIY‐YIG domain, involved in DNA nicking activity. It was hypothesised that ETs might act as epigenetic regulators.Here, methylome, transcriptome and phenotypic analyses were performed to investigate the role of ET factors and their involvement in DNA methylation in Arabidopsis thaliana.Comparative DNA methylation and transcriptome analyses in flowers and seedlings of et mutants revealed ET‐specific differentially expressed genes and mostly independently characteristic, ET‐specific differentially methylated regions. Loss of ET function results in pleiotropic developmental defects.The accumulation of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers after ultraviolet stress in et mutants suggests an ET function in DNA repair.
Highlights
Plant development depends on complex regulatory interactions, including the orchestrated coordination of numerous transcriptional networks
While interactions of transcription factors with DNA are essential for regulating gene expression, these are often modified through epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation and histone modifications (Du et al, 2015)
From combining methylome data with transcriptional profiles and with extensive phenotypic analyses in different organs and tissues, we propose that Arabidopsis EFFECTOR OF TRANSCRIPTION (ET) factors constitute a new class of epigenetic regulators involved in stable inheritance of DNA methylation patterns
Summary
Plant development depends on complex regulatory interactions, including the orchestrated coordination of numerous transcriptional networks. ET1 and ET2-GFP fusion proteins are detectable in the nucleus (Ivanov et al, 2008) In addition to their functional DNA-binding ET repeats (Ellerstrom et al, 2005), ET factors share a characteristic DNA single-strand nuclease domain (GIY-YIG) with structural similarity to that of bacterial UVRC proteins (Dunin-Horkawicz et al, 2006) and homing nucleases (Stoddard, 2005; Liu et al, 2013). The sequence similarity between plant ET factors and UVRC is restricted to this single-strand cutting GIY-YIG domain, suggesting that an ancestral bacterial GIY-YIG domain has been recruited by ET proteins and combined with the DNA-binding ET repeats to create a novel plant-specific regulatory protein (Ivanov et al, 2008).
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