<i>Arabidopsis</i> FORGETTER1 mediates stress-induced chromatin memory through nucleosome remodeling.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27680998.
- Also identified by DOI 10.7554/eLife.17061 and PMC identifier 5040591.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Plants as sessile organisms can adapt to environmental stress to mitigate its adverse effects. As part of such adaptation they maintain an active memory of heat stress for several days that promotes a more efficient response to recurring stress. We show that this heat stress memory requires the activity of the <i>FORGETTER1 (FGT1</i>) locus, with <i>fgt1</i> mutants displaying reduced maintenance of heat-induced gene expression. <i>FGT1</i> encodes the <i>Arabidopsis thaliana</i> orthologue of Strawberry notch (Sno), and the protein globally associates with the promoter regions of actively expressed genes in a heat-dependent fashion. FGT1 interacts with chromatin remodelers of the SWI/SNF and ISWI families, which also display reduced heat stress memory. Genomic targets of the BRM remodeler overlap significantly with FGT1 targets. Accordingly, nucleosome dynamics at loci with altered maintenance of heat-induced expression are affected in <i>fgt1</i>. Together, our results suggest that by modulating nucleosome occupancy, FGT1 mediates stress-induced chromatin memory.