Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 110, Issue 19, Pages 7934-7939Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1306164110
Keywords
DNA methylation; chromatin; RNA interference; gene imprinting
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [IOS-1025890]
- National Institutes of Health Grant [GM69415]
- Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation
- Fulbright scholarship
- Office of Science of the US Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-AC02-05CH1123]
- US DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research through Contract [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1025890] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Integrative Organismal Systems [1025890] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Arabidopsis thaliana endosperm, a transient tissue that nourishes the embryo, exhibits extensive localized DNA demethylation on maternally inherited chromosomes. Demethylation mediates parent-of-origin-specific (imprinted) gene expression but is apparently unnecessary for the extensive accumulation of maternally biased small RNA (sRNA) molecules detected in seeds. Endosperm DNA in the distantly related monocots rice and maize is likewise locally hypomethylated, but whether this hypomethylation is generally parent-of-origin specific is unknown. Imprinted expression of sRNA also remains uninvestigated in monocot seeds. Here, we report high-coverage sequencing of the Kitaake rice cultivar that enabled us to show that localized hypomethylation in rice endosperm occurs solely on the maternal genome, preferring regions of high DNA accessibility. Maternally expressed imprinted genes are enriched for hypomethylation at putative promoter regions and transcriptional termini and paternally expressed genes at promoters and gene bodies, mirroring our recent results in A. thaliana. However, unlike in A. thaliana, rice endosperm sRNA populations are dominated by specific strong sRNA-producing loci, and imprinted 24-nt sRNAs are expressed from both parental genomes and correlate with hypomethylation. Overlaps between imprinted sRNA loci and imprinted genes expressed from opposite alleles suggest that sRNAs may regulate genomic imprinting. Whereas sRNAs in seedling tissues primarily originate from small class II (cut-and-paste) transposable elements, those in endosperm are more uniformly derived, including sequences from other transposon classes, as well as genic and intergenic regions. Our data indicate that the endosperm exhibits a unique pattern of sRNA expression and suggest that localized hypomethylation of maternal endosperm DNA is conserved in flowering plants.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available