Towards Direct Epigenomic and Expression Profiling of Plant Meiosis

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Sebastien Andreuzza
• Monday 13 June 2016, 16:00-17:00
• Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Plant Sciences.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ian Henderson.

Meiosis is a specialized division essential for sexual reproduction, as it produces haploid cells that will differentiate into gametes. As a developmental program, meiosis is characterized by high levels of chromosome recombination and a modified cell cycle. While the functions of the genes that carry these tasks are reasonably well studied across models, much less is known about the factors and mechanisms that control and regulate their expression, except in yeast. In yeast, environmental conditions activate master transcription factors, which trigger a transcription cascade that drives meiotic progression. However, the yeast factors are not conserved and we know very little about their counterparts in plants and animals. In Arabidopsis, DUET (also known as MMD1 ), encodes a PHD finger protein essential for male meiosis. PHD fingers are often found in chromatin readers that are involved in transcription regulation. We found that DUET is indeed required for proper expression of a subset of meiotic genes. Further characterization of DUET and identification of a direct target, suggests that regulation of gene expression is linked with meiotic progression as in yeast, and points to a possible role for histone modifications in the process. Histone modifications, as well as other epigenetic marks of chromatin, have already been shown to play a role in recombination, suggesting an important role for epigenetic mechanisms in meiosis. We next plan to directly isolate meiotic cells and establish their chromatin and expression profiles in order to further elucidate the controls of meiosis and sexual reproduction in plants.

This talk is part of the Plant Sciences Talks series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Plant Sciences

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.