Project description:Young Fagus sylvatica trees (approximately 7 to 8 years) were collected from a natural regeneration beech forest. The trees were excavated with intact soil cores, roots and top organic layer. The trees were then kept outdoors at the Department of Forest Botany, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Plants were protected from rain, and light conditions were matched to those of the natural stand using a shading net; otherwise, plants were exposed to natural climatic conditions. The soil moisture was regularly measured; plants were watered with deionized water as needed to keep soil moisture close to the original conditions. Trees was randomly relocated on a weekly basis throughout the experiment to avoid biasses caused by location or light effects. After 21 weeks, a treatment was applied to understand the physiological mechanisms of inorganic nitrogen uptake and assimilation under conditions of an inorganic nitrogen saturated forest simulation: Plants were fertilized with either a 20 mM solution of KNO3, a 20 mM solution of NH4Cl, or demineralized water (control) for 2 days. On the third day, the trees were harvested. Root tips were immediately shock-frozen in liquid nitrogen and used for RNA extraction.
Project description:This dataset represents woody plants recorded in 16 1-ha forest plots in an elevational gradient in Madidi National Park, Bolivia, ranging from lowland Amazonian moist forest and lowland dry forest to the treeline of the Andean Altiplano. This work was carried out by David Henderson and Jonathan Myers (Washington University in St. Louis), Sebastian Tello (Missouri Botanical Garden and University of Missouri, St. Louis), and Brian Sedio (University of Texas at Austin and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute).
Project description:How heterochromatin genes evolve as ‘gene islands’ to fit into the repressive chromatin environment in plants are poorly understood. To address this question, we performed a comprehensive epigenetic profiling in the genus Oryza with high quality BAC-assembled regional sequences and near gap-free genomes. Comparative analyses of a heterochromatin knob demonstrated the dynamics of chromatin states (heterochromatin versus euchromatin) among the Oryza species in a phylogenetic context. LTR (long-terminal repeat) retrotransposons are the main contributor (~99%) to heterochromatin diversity. Heterochromatin genes are distributed as ‘gene islands’ in heterochromatin, but heterochromatin hardly projects expression disturbance to them. Heterochromatin genes are almost free of H3K9me2 histone modifications in exons, and have similar gene structure and transposon invasion rate in introns to its orthologous euchromatin counterparts. Analyses of the rice HiC data verified the topological existence of ‘gene islands’ and demonstrated that ‘gene islands’ are less spatially co-localized with heterochromatin. By examining evolutionarily recent inserted genes in the Oryza species, we found that the active promoters of six inserted genes can elevate CHH (H=A, C, T) methylation at the insertion sites. Our results reveals that heterochromatin genes evolve as heterochromatin-insulated ‘gene islands’ to escape the repressive influence of heterochromatin, contrasting to the ‘integration’ model in Drosophila. We suggest that active gene promoters may contribute to this insulation by acting as an important heterochromatin-euchromatin boundary in plants.
Project description:How heterochromatin genes evolve as ‘gene islands’ to fit into the repressive chromatin environment in plants are poorly understood. To address this question, we performed a comprehensive epigenetic profiling in the genus Oryza with high quality BAC-assembled regional sequences and near gap-free genomes. Comparative analyses of a heterochromatin knob demonstrated the dynamics of chromatin states (heterochromatin versus euchromatin) among the Oryza species in a phylogenetic context. LTR (long-terminal repeat) retrotransposons are the main contributor (~99%) to heterochromatin diversity. Heterochromatin genes are distributed as ‘gene islands’ in heterochromatin, but heterochromatin hardly projects expression disturbance to them. Heterochromatin genes are almost free of H3K9me2 histone modifications in exons, and have similar gene structure and transposon invasion rate in introns to its orthologous euchromatin counterparts. Analyses of the rice HiC data verified the topological existence of ‘gene islands’ and demonstrated that ‘gene islands’ are less spatially co-localized with heterochromatin. By examining evolutionarily recent inserted genes in the Oryza species, we found that the active promoters of six inserted genes can elevate CHH (H=A, C, T) methylation at the insertion sites. Our results reveals that heterochromatin genes evolve as heterochromatin-insulated ‘gene islands’ to escape the repressive influence of heterochromatin, contrasting to the ‘integration’ model in Drosophila. We suggest that active gene promoters may contribute to this insulation by acting as an important heterochromatin-euchromatin boundary in plants.