Project description:H3K27me3 usually enriched with low or no expressed genes in animal or plant genomes. However, some researches indicate that H3K27me3 can be enriched with high expressed genes in human genome. It's still unknown that whether this kind of gene is appeared in plant genomes and the mechanisms are also unclear. In this study，we used ChIP-seq to develop high resolution profiles of H3K27me3 distributions in several tissues or cell-types of maize to better understand the role of this mark in an important crop. The integration of ChIP-seq H3K27me3 profiles with RNA-seq and WGBS-seq data sets suggested that H3K27me3 may play diverse roles in regulation chromatin structure and function. We found that subsets of highly expressed genes are significantly enriched with H3K27me3 in maize. The profiles of several maize mutants reveal functional divergence for the control of H3K27me3 among maize genes. The analysis of existing rice and Arabidopsis data finds that a subset of highly expressed genes in these species are also associated with high levels of H3K27me3. Collectively, our analyses demonstrate that H3K27me3 alone or cooperating with DNA methylation and other chromatin features actively regulates subsets of gene expression, thereby providing new insights in diverse functions of H3K27me3 in plants.
Project description:H3K27me3 usually enriched with low or no expressed genes in animal or plant genomes. However, some researches indicate that H3K27me3 can be enriched with high expressed genes in human genome. It's still unknown that whether this kind of gene is appeared in plant genomes and the mechanisms are also unclear. In this study we used ChIP-seq to develop high resolution profiles of H3K27me3 distributions in several tissues or cell-types of maize to better understand the role of this mark in an important crop. The integration of ChIP-seq H3K27me3 profiles with RNA-seq and WGBS-seq data sets suggested that H3K27me3 may play diverse roles in regulation chromatin structure and function. We found that subsets of highly expressed genes are significantly enriched with H3K27me3 in maize. The profiles of several maize mutants reveal functional divergence for the control of H3K27me3 among maize genes. The analysis of existing rice and Arabidopsis data finds that a subset of highly expressed genes in these species are also associated with high levels of H3K27me3. Collectively, our analyses demonstrate that H3K27me3 alone or cooperating with DNA methylation and other chromatin features actively regulates subsets of gene expression, thereby providing new insights in diverse functions of H3K27me3 in plants.
