Reprogramming the epigenome during germline and seed development 英文参考文献.docVIP

Minireview Reprogramming the epigenome during germline and seed development Mark A Johnson and Judith Bender Address: Brown University, Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry, 185 Meeting St., Providence, RI 02912, USA. Correspondence: Judith Bender. Email: judith_bender@ male gametophyte: two haploid sperm cells housed in the pollen cytoplasm in close association with the haploid pollen nucleus, called the vegetative nucleus [8]. During fertilization, an extension of the pollen grain grows through Abstract Gene silencing by DNA methylation and small RNAs is globally reconfigured during gametogenesis in Arabidopsis, affecting transposon activity, gene regulation and development. floral tissue to deliver two sperm to a female gametophyte. One sperm fertilizes the egg to produce the embryo (green, Epigenomics, the comprehensive study of how a genome is marked by histone modifications and 5-methylcytosine DNA methylation to provide regulatory information, is now in its heyday. Epigenomics has the power to uncover overall trends in chromatin dynamics as well as specific regulatory loci during development and disease progres- sion. The reference plant Arabidopsis thaliana has led the way in developing epigenomics technologies because of its compact genome decorated with histone modifications and DNA methylation that serve similar gene-activating or gene-repressing functions as in mammalian genomes. For example, in Arabidopsis, transposons and repetitive sequences are targeted for DNA methylation and transcriptional gene silencing through a small-RNA-guided mechanism [1] analogous to the specialized Piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway in the mammalian germline [2]. Figure 1); the other sperm fertilizes the central cell to produce the endosperm (yellow, Figure 1). The endosperm feeds the embryo