BioProject

The decision of whether to grow and proliferate or to restrict growth and develop resilience to stress is a key biological trade-off. More...

The decision of whether to grow and proliferate or to restrict growth and develop resilience to stress is a key biological trade-off. Multiple tumour suppressors have roles in suppressing growth and proliferation when conditions are unfavourable, and aggressive tumours show re-wiring of the metabolic pathways and removal of these restraints on growth. In plants, constitutive growth results in increased sensitivity to environmental stress. However, the underlying mechanisms controlling this decision are not well understood. We used temperature as a cue to discover regulators of this process in plants, as it both enhances growth and development rates within a specific range, and is also a stress at extremes. We find the conserved chromatin protein DEK plays a central role in balancing the response between growth and arrest in Arabidopsis, and it does this via H2A.Z-nucleosomes. DEK target genes show two distinct categories of chromatin architecture, and these predict induction or repression by DEK. We show that these chromatin signatures of DEK target genes might be conserved in human cells, suggesting that DEK may act through a fundamental evolutionarily conserved mechanism to control the balance between growth and arrest in plants and animals. Less...