Nature Cell Biology 7, 1256 - 1260 (2005)
Published online: 20 November 2005; | doi:10.1038/ncb1329
There is an Erratum (December 2005) associated with this Letter.
Prevention of early flowering by expression of FLOWERING LOCUS C requires methylation of histone H3 K36Zhong Zhao1, Yu Yu1, Denise Meyer1, Chengjun Wu1, 2
& Wen-Hui Shen11
Institut de Biologie Moléculaire des Plantes (IBMP), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg (ULP), 12 rue du Général Zimmer, 67084 Strasbourg Cédex, France. 2
Present address: Biotechnology Research Institute of Yunnan Academy of Agriculture Sciences, Kunming 650223, Yunnan, People's Republic of China.
Correspondence should be addressed to Wen-Hui Shen Wen-Hui.Shen@ibmp-ulp.u-strasbg.fr FLCSDG 8SETHKMTAWSFTSOC1ACTINTa3VIP4Flowering represents a crucial transition from a vegetative to a reproductive phase of the plant life cycle. Despite extensive studies, the molecular mechanisms controlling flowering remain elusive. Although the enzymes involved are unknown, methylation of histone H3 K9 and K27 correlates with repression of FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC), an essential transcriptional repressor involved in flowering time control in Arabidopsis thaliana; in contrast, methylation of H3K4 correlates with FLC activation1,
2,
3,
4. Here we show that loss-of-function of SET DOMAIN GROUP 8 (SDG 8), which encodes a homologue of the yeast SET2 histone methyltransferase, results in reduced dimethylation of histone H3K36, particularly in chromatin associated with the FLC promoter and the first intron, regions that contain essential cis-elements for transcription. sdg8 mutants display reduced FLC expression and flower early, establishing SDG8-mediated H3K36 methylation as a novel epigenetic memory code required for FLC expression in preventing early flowering. This is the first demonstrated role of H3K36 methylation in eukaryote development.
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