Dataset Information

Single-cell expression noise and gene-body methylation in Arabidopsis thaliana.

ABSTRACT: Gene-body methylation (gbM) refers to an increased level of methylated cytosines specifically in a CG sequence context within genes. gbM is found in plant genes with intermediate expression level, which evolve slowly, and is often broadly conserved across millions of years of evolution. Intriguingly however, some plants lack gbM, and thus it remains unclear whether gbM has a function. In animals, there is support for a role of gbM in reducing erroneous transcription and transcription noise, but so far most studies in plants have tested for an effect of gbM on expression level, not noise. Here, we therefore tested whether gbM was associated with reduced expression noise in Arabidopsis thaliana, using single-cell transcriptome sequencing data from root quiescent centre cells. We find that gbM genes have lower expression noise levels than unmethylated genes. However, an analysis of covariance revealed that, if other genomic features are taken into account, this association disappears. Nonetheless, gbM genes were more consistently expressed across single-cell samples, supporting previous inference that gbM genes are constitutively expressed. Finally, we observed that fewer RNAseq reads map to introns of gbM genes than to introns of unmethylated genes, which indicates that gbM might be involved in reducing erroneous transcription by reducing intron retention.

SUBMITTER: Horvath R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6781109 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Single-cell expression noise and gene-body methylation in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Horvath Robert R Laenen Benjamin B Takuno Shohei S Slotte Tanja T

Heredity 20190116 2

Gene-body methylation (gbM) refers to an increased level of methylated cytosines specifically in a CG sequence context within genes. gbM is found in plant genes with intermediate expression level, which evolve slowly, and is often broadly conserved across millions of years of evolution. Intriguingly however, some plants lack gbM, and thus it remains unclear whether gbM has a function. In animals, there is support for a role of gbM in reducing erroneous transcription and transcription noise, but ...[more]

PMID: 30651589

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Project description:BACKGROUND: Microarray technology is a widely used approach for monitoring genome-wide gene expression. For Arabidopsis, there are over 1,800 microarray hybridizations representing many different experimental conditions on Affymetrix ATH1 gene chips alone. This huge amount of data offers a unique opportunity to infer the principles that govern the regulation of gene expression in plants. RESULTS: We used bioinformatics methods to analyze publicly available data obtained using the ATH1 chip from Affymetrix. A total of 1887 ATH1 hybridizations were normalized and filtered to eliminate low-quality hybridizations. We classified and compared control and treatment hybridizations and determined differential gene expression. The largest differences in gene expression were observed when comparing samples obtained from different organs. On average, ten-fold more genes were differentially expressed between organs as compared to any other experimental variable. We defined "gene responsiveness" as the number of comparisons in which a gene changed its expression significantly. We defined genes with the highest and lowest responsiveness levels as hypervariable and housekeeping genes, respectively. Remarkably, housekeeping genes were best distinguished from hypervariable genes by differences in methylation status in their transcribed regions. Moreover, methylation in the transcribed region was inversely correlated (R2 = 0.8) with gene responsiveness on a genome-wide scale. We provide an example of this negative relationship using genes encoding TCA cycle enzymes, by contrasting their regulatory responsiveness to nitrate and methylation status in their transcribed regions. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that the Arabidopsis transcriptome is largely established during development and is comparatively stable when faced with external perturbations. We suggest a novel functional role for DNA methylation in the transcribed region as a key determinant capable of restraining the capacity of a gene to respond to internal/external cues. Our findings suggest a prominent role for epigenetic mechanisms in the regulation of gene expression in plants.

Dataset Information

Single-cell expression noise and gene-body methylation in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Publications

Single-cell expression noise and gene-body methylation in Arabidopsis thaliana.

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