SDG714 Regulates Specific Gene Expression and Consequently Affects Plant Growth via H3K9 Dimethylation

• Published in: Journal of integrative plant biology Vol. 52; no. 4; pp. 420 - 430
• Main Authors: Ding, Bo, Zhu, Yan, Bu, Zhong-Yuan, Shen, Wen-Hui, Yu, Yu, Dong, Ai-Wu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Melbourne, Australia Melbourne, Australia : Blackwell Publishing Asia 01-04-2010; Blackwell Publishing Asia; Wiley
• Subjects: Arabidopsis - drug effects; Arabidopsis - genetics; Arabidopsis - growth & development; Arabidopsis - metabolism; Blotting, Western; Cellular Biology; Chromatin Immunoprecipitation; Estradiol - pharmacology; Heterochromatin - metabolism; Histones - metabolism; Life Sciences; Lysine - metabolism; Methylation; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; Oryza - genetics; Oryza - growth & development; Oryza - metabolism; Plant Proteins - drug effects; Plant Proteins - genetics; Plant Proteins - metabolism; Plant Proteins - physiology; Plants, Genetically Modified - genetics; Plants, Genetically Modified - growth & development; Plants, Genetically Modified - metabolism; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; 异染色质; 抑制作用; 植物生长发育; 特异基因表达; 甲基化水平; 真核生物; 转基因拟南芥; 遗传调控
• ISSN: 1672-9072; 1744-7909
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-7909.2010.00927.x

Histone lysine methylation is known to be involved in the epigenetic regulation of gene expression in all eukaryotes including plants. Here we show that the rice SDG714 is primarily responsible for dimethylation but not trimethylaUon on histone H3K9 in vivo. Overexpression of YFP-SDG714 in Arabidopsis significantly inhibits plant growth and this inhibition is associated with an enhanced level of H3K9 dimethylation. Our microarray results show that many genes essential for the plant growth and development were downregulated in transgenic Arabidopsis plants overexpressing YFP-SDG714. By chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis, we show that YFP-SDG714 is targeted to specific chromatin regions and dimethylate the H3Kg, which is linked with heterochromatinization and the downregulation of genes. Most interestingly, when YFP-SDG714 production is stopped, the inhibited plants can partially restore their growth, suggesting that the perturbation of gene expression caused by YFP-SDG714 is revertible. Taken together, our results point to an important role of SDG714 in H3K9 dimethylation, suppression of gene expression and plant growth, and provide a potential method to regulate gene expression and plant development by an on-off switch of SDG714 expression.