Widespread long-range cis-regulatory elements in the maize genome

WA Ricci, Z Lu, L Ji, AP Marand, CL Ethridge… - Nature plants, 2019 - nature.com
Genetic mapping studies on crops suggest that agronomic traits can be controlled by gene–
distal intergenic loci. Despite the biological importance and the potential agronomic utility of …

The prevalence, evolution and chromatin signatures of plant regulatory elements

Z Lu, AP Marand, WA Ricci, CL Ethridge, X Zhang… - Nature Plants, 2019 - nature.com
Chromatin accessibility and modification is a hallmark of regulatory DNA, the study of which
led to the discovery of cis-regulatory elements (CREs). Here, we characterize chromatin …

Cold stress induces enhanced chromatin accessibility and bivalent histone modifications H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 of active genes in potato

Z Zeng, W Zhang, AP Marand, B Zhu, CR Buell, J Jiang - Genome biology, 2019 - Springer
Background Cold stress can greatly affect plant growth and development. Plants have
developed special systems to respond to and tolerate cold stress. While plant scientists have …

Dynamic control of enhancer activity drives stage-specific gene expression during flower morphogenesis

W Yan, D Chen, J Schumacher, D Durantini… - Nature …, 2019 - nature.com
Enhancers are critical for developmental stage-specific gene expression, but their dynamic
regulation in plants remains poorly understood. Here we compare genome-wide localization …

Modulating chromatin accessibility by transactivation and targeting proximal dsgRNAs enhances Cas9 editing efficiency in vivo

G Liu, K Yin, Q Zhang, C Gao, JL Qiu - Genome biology, 2019 - Springer
The CRISPR/Cas9 system is unable to edit all targetable genomic sites with full efficiency in
vivo. We show that Cas9-mediated editing is more efficient in open chromatin regions than …

H3K4me2 functions as a repressive epigenetic mark in plants

Y Liu, K Liu, L Yin, Y Yu, J Qi, WH Shen, J Zhu… - Epigenetics & …, 2019 - Springer
Abstract Background In animals, H3K4me2 and H3K4me3 are enriched at the transcription
start site (TSS) and function as epigenetic marks that regulate gene transcription, but their …

Global quantitative mapping of enhancers in rice by STARR-seq

J Sun, N He, L Niu, Y Huang, W Shen… - Genomics …, 2019 - academic.oup.com
Enhancers activate transcription in a distance-, orientation-, and position-independent
manner, which makes them difficult to be identified. Self-transcribing active regulatory region …

Characterization of functional relationships of R-loops with gene transcription and epigenetic modifications in rice

Y Fang, L Chen, K Lin, Y Feng, P Zhang… - Genome …, 2019 - genome.cshlp.org
We conducted genome-wide identification of R-loops followed by integrative analyses of R-
loops with relation to gene expression and epigenetic signatures in the rice genome. We …

Historical meiotic crossover hotspots fueled patterns of evolutionary divergence in rice

AP Marand, H Zhao, W Zhang, Z Zeng, C Fang… - The Plant …, 2019 - academic.oup.com
Recombination plays an integral role in the creation of novel genetic variation in sexually
reproducing species. Despite this important role, the determinants and evolution of …

Local changes in chromatin accessibility and transcriptional networks underlying the nitrate response in Arabidopsis roots

JM Alvarez, TC Moyano, T Zhang, DE Gras, FJ Herrera… - Molecular Plant, 2019 - cell.com
Transcriptional regulation, determined by the chromatin structure and regulatory elements
interacting at promoter regions, is a key step in plant responses to environmental cues …