Study : Over-expression of DNA methyltransferase MET1 in Arabidopsis generates new epi-alleles with heritable expression states

Identification

Name

Over-expression of DNA methyltransferase MET1 in Arabidopsis generates new epi-alleles with heritable expression states

Identifier

dXJuOkVWQS9zdHVkeS9QUkpOQTM5NTk5NQ==

Source

Data link

Link to this study on EBI European Nucleotide Archive

Description

Epigenetic marks such as DNA methylation and histone modification can vary among plant accessions creating epi-alleles with different levels of expression competence. For some genetic loci, epigenetic marks are transmitted to the next generation, epigenetic changes can induce heritable changes in gene expression and phenotype. In Arabidopsis thaliana, DNA METHYLTRANSFERASE1 (MET1) controls maintenance of cytosine methylation at symmetrical CG positions. At a small number of loci, which contain dense DNA methylation in CG- and non-CG context, loss of MET1 causes joint loss of all cytosine methylation marks. As this suggests an additional role of MET1 as a coordinator for dense methylation patterns, we investigated if MET1-dependent dense methylation was also sensitive to increased MET1 levels. We find that, at certain dense methylation loci, over-expression of both catalytically active and inactive versions of MET1 generates epi-alleles with novel expression states, DNA methylation patterns and histone marks. Some of the induced epi-alleles were maintained after the MET1 transgene had been crossed out. Over-expression of MET1, which we hypothesise to cause an imbalance in MET1 binding to interactors or complexes that regulate dense methylation, offers a powerful tool to create novel epi-alleles and to investigate links between DNA methylation and gene function.

Data files

Genotype

Accession number	Name	Taxon