Abstract
BackgroundHistone methylation mainly occurs on the lysine residues and plays a crucial role during flowering and stress responses of plants, through changing the methylation status or ratio of lysine residues. Histone lysine residues of plants can arise in three forms of methylation (single, double and triple) and the corresponding demethylation can also ensue on certain occasions, by which the plants can accommodate the homeostasis of histone methylation by means of lysine methyltransferase and demethylase. The JmjC domain-containing proteins, an important family of histone lysine demethylases, play a vital role in maintaining homeostasis of histone methylation in vivo.ResultsIn this study, we have identified 19 JmjC domain-containing histone demethylase (JHDM) proteins in maize. Based on structural characteristics and a comparison of phylogenetic relationships of JHDM gene families from Arabidopsis, rice and maize, all 19 JHDM proteins in maize were categorized into three different subfamilies. Furthermore, chromosome location and schematic structure revealed an unevenly distribution on chromosomes and structure features of ZmJMJ genes in maize, respectively. Eventually, the 19 ZmJMJ genes displayed different expression patterns at diverse developmental stages of maize based on transcriptome analysis. Further, quantitative real-time PCR analysis showed that all 19 ZmJMJ genes were responsive to heat stress treatment, suggesting their potential roles in heat stress response.ConclusionsOverall, our study will serve to present an important theoretical basis for future functional verification of JHDM genes to further unravel the mechanisms of epigenetic regulation in plants.
Highlights
Histone methylation mainly occurs on the lysine residues and plays a crucial role during flowering and stress responses of plants, through changing the methylation status or ratio of lysine residues
Identification of the members of Jumonji C (JmjC) domain-containing histone demethylase (JHDM) gene family in maize To identify all possible homologs of JHDM gene family in maize, the amino acid sequences of Arabidopsis and rice JmjC domain-containing proteins and their JmjC domains (Pfam: PF02373, SMART: SM00558) were adopted as the query sequences to search against the maize genome database with BlastP program
We aligned all the ZmJMJ genes with Arabidopsis and rice JHDM genes to generate a phylogenetic tree for classification of maize JHDM genes
Summary
Histone methylation mainly occurs on the lysine residues and plays a crucial role during flowering and stress responses of plants, through changing the methylation status or ratio of lysine residues. Based on the different ways of their action, these lysine demethylases are sorted into two categories: (1) LSDs, lysine-specific demethylases 1, remove the methyl groups by amine oxidation; (2) JHDMs (JmjC domain-containing histone demethylases), the demethylases containing the JmjC domains, remove the methyl groups through hydroxylation [9, 10]. These two types of enzymes require various cofactors and act on particular substrates. JHDM resorts to the participation of Fe and α-ketoglutarate (α-KG), which can act on the methylation of three forms of lysine [6, 11, 12]
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