Article
Mar 5, 2024
A bivalent histone mark reader, AtDEK2 governs plant immunity.
Authors:
Naganand Rayapuram1 ORCID Email Hanna Alhoraibi2 Santiago Alejandro-Martinez3 David Latrasse4 Papita Mandal5 Lea Faivre6 Xiaoning He3 Déborah Manza Mianza7 Aala Abulfaraj8 Siba Alhrabi5 Kiruthiga Mariappan9 Olga Artyukh5 Fatimah Abdulhakim5 ORCID Fatimah Aljedaani5 Stephan David5 Marilia Almeida-Trapp10 Jean Bigeard3 Delphine Pflieger11 Wolfgang Fischle5 Stefan Arold12 ORCID Jean Colcombet3 Daniel Schubert13 Moussa Benhamed14 ORCID Ikram Blilou12 Heribert Hirt1 ORCID
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Abstract
In Arabidopsis thaliana, the nuclear protein DEK2 orchestrates diverse chromatin-related processes and exhibits phosphorylation in response to flagellin22 treatment, implicating its involvement in plant immunity against bacterial pathogens. Loss-of-function mutants of dek2 have their immunity compromised to both bacterial and fungal pathogens. Transcriptomic analysis of the dek2-1 mutant unveils AtDEK2 as a transcriptional repressor of defense-related genes, as well as genes associated with hormone synthesis and signaling. Chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-Seq) analysis reveals that DEK2 binds to motifs of various transcription factor families, with a notable enrichment in class I TCP binding motif regions. Our findings indicate that DEK2 is recruited to specific chromatin regions by transcription factors and functions as a reader of the bivalent histone mark H3K4me3K27me3. Consequently, we propose a hypothetical working model wherein DEK2 acts as a transcriptional repressor targeting regions marked by H3K4me3K27me3, shedding light on its role in plant immunity.