EPIGENETIC ‘MEMORY OF WINTER COLD’ IN ARABIDOPSIS: FORMATION, TRANSMISSION AND RESETTING

报告人介绍：

北京大学现代beat365教授，北大-清华生命科学联合中心研究员，兼北京大学现代农业研究院副经理。2001年获美国肯塔基大学 (University of Kentucky) 博士学位，2001.10-2005.07在威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校生物化学系 (University of Wisconsin-Madison) 从事博士后研究。2005-2014任新加坡国立大学 (National University of Singapore) 生物科学系助理教授、长聘副教授 (Tenured Associate Professor), 2006-2014任新加坡淡马锡生命科学研究所 (Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory) 研究员 (Principal Investigator) 及Senior PI，2014-2020年任中国科学院上海植物逆境生物学研究中心研究员。2020.10起任职北京大学现代beat365。

何跃辉教授长期从事植物环境表观遗传学研究，采用模式开花植物拟南芥，聚焦其关键成花基因FLC (FLOWERING LOCUS C)及成花素基因FT (FLOWERING LOCUS T)，探讨季节变化等环境因素（温度和光周期）调控开花时间的分子与表观遗传机理；揭示了长期低温（冬季低温）调控拟南芥在春季开花的分子与表观遗传机制。在Nature, Science, Nature Genetics, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Plants, Nature Communications, Developmental Cell, Genes & Development, PLoS Biology, Current Biology, Molecular Plant, Plant Cell等期刊发表论文五十余篇。

Abstract

In many plants grown at a high latitude, flowering is enabled by experiencing prolonged cold exposure in winter (winter cold). Through a process termed as vernalization, winter cold often triggers the repression of a potent floral repressor to enable plants to flower in spring when temperature rises. In over-wintering Arabidopsis accessions, vernalization induces the silencing of the potent floral repressor FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC), encoding a MADS-box transcription factor that inhibits flowering. This enables Arabidopsis plants to flower in next spring. Winter cold causes repressive histone modifications such as histone 3 lysine-27 trimethylation (H3K27me3) on FLC chromatin for transcriptional repression. When temperature rises in spring, the silenced FLC state is epigenetically maintained in subsequent growth and development (i.e. ‘memory of winter cold’), enabling plants to flower, but this state is transmitted or inherited to the zygote and early embryos, but is subsequently reset by the end of embryo development to ensure that each generation must experience winter cold prior to flowering. We have found that several cis-reg.