Put your 3D glasses on: plant chromatin is on show

NATALIA Y. RODRIGUEZ-GRANADOS; JUAN S. RAMIREZ-PRADO; ALAGURAJ VELUCHAMY; DAVID LATRASSE; CÉCILE RAYNAUD; MARTIN CRESPI; FEDERICO ARIEL; MOUSSA BENHAMED

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BOTANY

OXFORD UNIV PRESS

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2016

0022-0957

The three-dimensional organization of the eukaryotic nucleus and its chromosomal conformation have emerged asimportant features in the complex network of mechanisms behind gene activity and genome connectivity dynamics,which can be evidenced in the regionalized chromosomal spatial distribution and the clustering of diverse genomicregions with similar expression patterns. The development of chromatin conformation capture (3C) techniques haspermitted the elucidation of commonalities between the eukaryotic phyla, as well as important differences amongthem. The growing number of studies in the field performed in plants has shed light on the structural and regulatoryfeatures of these organisms. For instance, it has been proposed that plant chromatin can be arranged into differentconformations such as Rabl, Rosette-like, and Bouquet, and that both short- and long-range chromatin interactionsoccur in Arabidopsis. In this review, we compile the current knowledge about chromosome architecture characteristicsin plants, as well as the molecular events and elements (including long non-coding RNAs, histone and DNA modifications,chromatin remodeling complexes, and transcription factors) shaping the genome three-dimensional conformation.Furthermore, we discuss the developmental outputs of genome topology-mediated gene expression regulation. Itis becoming increasingly clear that new tools and techniques with higher resolution need to be developed and implementedin Arabidopsis and other model plants in order to better understand chromosome architecture dynamics, froman integrative perspective with other fields of plant biology such as development, stress biology, and finally agriculture.