Overlap amongst the sets of genes differentially expressed in vim1/2/3 and met1 (Shook and Richards, 2014). Consistently with these data, our outcome that the majority on the genes derepressed in vim1/2/3 were up-regulated in met1 (11 out of 13 genes) (Figure 2) further supports a vital functional connection involving the VIM proteins and MET1. We also observed that VIM1-binding capacity to its target genes correlated with DNA methylation (Figures 3 and 4) and was considerably decreased in the met1 mutant (Figure 7). In addition, the VIM deficiency caused a important decrease in H3K9me2 marks at the heterochromatic chromocenters (Figure 6B), which is constant with earlier observations in the met1 mutant (Tariq et al., 2003). We consequently propose that the VIM proteins are deposited at target sequences mainly by means of recognition of CG methylation established by MET1 and hence act as essentialGenome-Wide Epigenetic Silencing by VIM Proteinscomponents in the MET1-mediated DNA methylation pathway. As described for UHRF1, a mammalian homolog of VIM1 (Bostick et al., 2007; Sharif et al., 2007; Achour et al., 2008), the VIM proteins may well mediate the loading of MET1 onto their hemi-methylated targets by means of direct interactions with MET1, stimulating MET1 activity to ensure acceptable propagation of DNA methylation patterns during DNA duplication. Equally, it truly is attainable that the VIM proteins may indirectly interact with MET1 by constituting a repressive machinery complicated. It might hence be postulated that either the VIM proteins or MET1 serves as a guide for histone-modifying enzyme(s). VIM1 physically interacts using a tobacco histone methyltransferase NtSET1 (Liu et al., 2007), which supports the notion that VIM1 could play a part in ensuring the link between DNA methylation and histone H3K9 methylation. Conversely, MET1 physically interacts with HDA6 and MEA, that are involved in maintaining the inactive state of their target genes by establishing repressive histone modifications (Liu et al., 2012; Schmidt et al., 2013). Provided that VIM1 binds to histones, which includes H3 (Woo et al., 2007), and is capable of ubiquitylation (Kraft et al., 2008), we hypothesize that the VIM proteins directly modify histones. Although no incidences of histone ubiquitylation by the VIM proteins have already been reported to date, it truly is noteworthy that UHRF1 is in a position to ubiquitylate H3 in vivo and in vitro (Citterio et al.Etiocholanolone Autophagy , 2004; Jenkins et al.PBIT supplier , 2005; Karagianni et al.PMID:24202965 , 2008; Nishiyama et al., 2013). In addition, UHRF1-dependent H3 ubiquitylation is often a prerequisite for the recruitment of DNMT1 to DNA replication sites (Nishiyama et al., 2013). These findings support the hypothesis that the VIM proteins act as a mechanistic bridge between DNA methylation and histone modification through histone ubiquitylation. Future challenges will contain identification of your direct targets of every VIM protein by way of genome-wide screening. Further experiments combining genome-wide analyses on DNA methylation and histone modification in vim1/2/3 will contribute to our understanding of their molecular functions inside the context of epigenetic gene silencing, and can assist us to elucidate how these epigenetic marks are interconnected by way of the VIM proteins. Collectively, our study provides a new point of view on the interplay involving the two significant epigenetic pathways of DNA methylation and histone modification in gene silencing.METHODSPlant Materials and Development ConditionsArabidopsis.
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