BioProject

How heterochromatin genes evolve as ‘gene islands’ to fit into the repressive chromatin environment in plants are poorly understood. More...

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. Overall design: we conducted a comprehensive heterochromatin study among close-related species with high quality sequences and near-gap free genomes. To achieve this, we generated twenty-six new epigenetic datasets in this study including the heterochromatin hallmark H3K9me2 in six species and DNA methylation of Oryza brachyantha, two siRNA libraries of O. sativa and O.brachyantha. Less...