rnai, drd1, and histone methylation actively target developmentally important non-cg dna methylation in arabidopsisrnai drd1,组蛋白甲基化积极目标发展重要的拟南芥non-cg dna甲基化.pdfVIP

RNAi, DRD1, and Histone Methylation Actively Target Developmentally Important Non-CG DNA Methylation in Arabidopsis 1¤a 1 1 1 1¤b 1,2* Simon W.-L. Chan , Ian R. Henderson , Xiaoyu Zhang , Govind Shah , Jason S.-C. Chien , Steven E. Jacobsen 1 Department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America, 2 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America Cytosine DNA methylation protects eukaryotic genomes by silencing transposons and harmful DNAs, but also regulates gene expression during normal development. Loss of CG methylation in the Arabidopsis thaliana met1 and ddm1 mutants causes varied and stochastic developmental defects that are often inherited independently of the original met1 or ddm1 mutation. Loss of non-CG methylation in plants with combined mutations in the DRM and CMT3 genes also causes a suite of developmental defects. We show here that the pleiotropic developmental defects of drm1 drm2 cmt3 triple mutant plants are fully recessive, and unlike phenotypes caused by met1 and ddm1, are not inherited independently of the drm and cmt3 mutations. Developmental phenotypes are also reversed when drm1 drm2 cmt3 plants are transformed with DRM2 or CMT3, implying that non-CG DNA methylation is efficiently re-established by sequence-specific signals. We provide evidence that these signals include RNA silencing though the 24-nucleotide short interfering RNA (siRNA) pathway as well as histone H3K9 methylation, both of which converge on the putative chromatin-remodeling protein DRD1. These signals act in at least three parti