Publication details
Advances in plant chromatin
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Article in Periodical (without peer review) |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Plants as model systems have played a key role in the breakthrough discoveries of biology. The discoveries of cells (Hooke, 1665), chromosomes (von N€ ageli, 1842), laws of heredity (Mendel, 1866) or mobile genetic elements (McClintock, 1950) testify to this even with just a cursory glance at history. Very dominant– and not only from a his torical perspective– is the position of plant models from the point of view of epigenetics. The richness and multi layered nature of epigenetic mechanisms in plants natu rally result from their need to reprogram gene expression, not only at key moments of developmental changes, but also to adapt and respond to changes in environmental conditions. This is why plant epigenetics and the dynamics of chromatin structure are given high attention in research, and why this focus is the subject of specific conferences and workshops. Among these, the European Workshop on Plant Chromatin (EWPC) has gained its stable position since it was first organized by Claudia Koehler, Valerie Gaudin and Lars Hennig in September 2009 in Zurich. In May 2022, the 7th EWPC took place in the historical castle of Pruhonice near Prague (Czech Republic), surrounded by a beautiful UNESCO-heritage botanical park. In this special issue of TPJ, we– as the organizers of the 7th EWPC have collected review articles on topics addressed by lead ing research teams in the field, represented by EWPC par ticipants who accepted our invitation to contribute to this SI. We would like to use this opportunity to thank TPJ Edi tor-in-Chief, Lee Sweetlove, for the support of the 7th EWPC and for the opportunity to present the discussed problems in the form of this SI. We also thank Crisanto Gutierrez, the editor of TPJ, for all his assistance and dis cussions concerning this SI. Craig S. Pikaard, the keynote speaker at the 7th EWPC, and his colleagues provide a perspective on past and future research on nucleolar dominance (Pikaard et al., 2023), the epigenetic phenomenon first described by McClintock almost 50 years ago (McClintock, 1934). Understanding of transcriptional regulation via nucleolar dominance recently expanded substantially, starting from its cytogenetic description, then followed by genetic and molecular details on active and repressed nucleolar organizers. The key shift in the elucidation of the mechanism came only recently with the advent of long-read single-molecule sequencing approaches. These enabled a shift from the perspective of individual copies of rRNA genes to a comprehensive view of the entire rDNA loci. Naturally, emerging questions and even deeper digging, for example, into nucleolar domi nance initiation, arise with this current knowledge, which will require further research effort. Although, as the authors conclude, ‘the allure of science lies in the satisfaction of knowing that our reach can exceed our grasp’. The review by Ioanna Kakoulidou and Frank Johannes focuses on the dynamics of cytosine DNA methylation in plant hybrids (Kakoulidou & Johannes, 2023). DNA methyl ation is a prominent modification that is predominantly used by plants to suppress the activity of genomic para sites but which is also important for the regulation of gene transcription. Upon hybridization, the DNA methylation machinery must distribute modifications and organize chromatin in a way that reaches a new equilibrium. How ever, assessing these changes in the genomic regions lack ing genetic polymorphisms is challenging. |