3649-08 IICB.indd - Faculty of Biological Sciences - University of ...

Peter Meyer
PhD (Cologne);
Post Doc, Max-Planck-Institute for Breeding Research, Cologne (1985-1989);
Group Leader, Max-Delbrueck-Laboratory of the Max-Planck-Society (1989-1994);
Heisenberg Fellow of German Research Society, DFG (1994-1995);
Professor of Plant Genetics (1995-)
Contact: p.meyer@leeds.ac.uk
Plant
epigenetics
Epigenetic effects are phenomena that
alter the expression profile of a gene in
a heritable way, without any affect on
the DNA sequences. These heritable
but reversible effects occur at two
different levels:
(i) The competence of a gene to
be accessible for the transcription
machinery is determined by its
chromatin structure. Many transposable
elements and transgenes are packaged
into a repressive chromatin state
that prevents their transcription. In
transgenes, this can lead to tissue
sectors where an intact transgene
has been switched off, while in other
regions, the trangene is still functional.
(ii) The transcripts of individual genes
can be selectively degraded, a process
often associated with the formation of
double strand RNA for the affected
gene. The degradation products
(small RNAs) can guide a chromatin
remodeling mechanisms to the
homologous DNA, where these impose
a repressive chromatin structure. Plants
apply this mechanism to package
repetitive regions into heterochromatin
to ensure efficient genome organization.
We are interested to identify target
genes for epigenetic processes and
molecular functions that regulate
silencing events.
The role of natural antisense
transcripts in plants
In related research, we study the
role of natural antisense transcripts.
In textbooks, individual genes are
often depicted as independent units
that consist of a promoter, a coding
region and a polyadenylation unit. In
reality, however, there is a surprisingly
high number of genes that partially
overlap with other genes in antisense
orientation. Many of these convergently
overlapping genes are co-expressed
in the same tissue, which implies
that expression of one gene may be
involved in the regulations of the other.
We are using a number of such senseantisense
gene pairs to evaluate the
molecular effects of antisense gene
expression on the sense transcript.
Funding from these projects typically
comes from the EU and from BBSRC.
More information:
http://www.fbs.leeds.ac.uk/staff/pm/
Representative Publications
Depicker, A, Sanders, M and Meyer, P. (2005)
Transgene silencing. In: Annual Plant Reviews:
Plant Epigenetics, ed P Meyer, Blackwell
Publishing, Oxford, p 1-32
Jen, C-H, Michalopoulos, I, Westhead, DR and
Meyer, P. (2005) Natural antisense transcripts
with coding capacity in Arabidopsis may have
a regulatory role that is not linked to dsRNA
degradation. Genome Biology 5/6/6/R51
Zubko, E and Meyer, P. (2007) A natural
antisense transcript of the Petunia hybrida
Sho gene suggests a role for an antisense
mechanism in cytokinin regulation. Plant
Journal 52: 1131-1139
Mueller, A, Marins, M, Kamisugi, Y and Meyer,
P. (2002) Analysis of hypermethylation in the
RPS element suggests a signal function for
short inverted repeats in de novo methylation.
Plant Molecular Biology 48: 383-399