Abstracts (poster) - Wissenschaft Online

Huan Shu, Lars Hennig
Restructuring of epigenetic landscapes during plant
development
Chromatin is subject to a diverse array of posttranslational modifications (e.g.
methylation, acetylation, ubiquitinylation, ADP-ribosylation and phosphorylation) that
largely impinge on histone amino termini. Distinct histone amino-terminal modifications
and their combinations can synergistically or antagonistically create interaction surfaces
for chromatin-associated proteins, which in turn dictate dynamic transitions between
transcriptionally active or transcriptionally silent chromatin states. Little is known how
genome-wide epigenetic profiles (“epigenetic landscapes”) change during development.
The plant Arabidopsis is a great model to study such changes, because development is
well-characterized, the compact genome is well annotated and because many mutants
deficient in chromatin dynamics are available. One of the most important and beststudied
developmental decisions in plants is the decision when to flower and engage in
reproduction. Here, we will present our approaches and initial results of a project that
probes the changing epigenetic profiles during the transition to flowering of Arabidopsis
by ChIP-chip.
contact:
PhD student Huan Shu
ETH
Institute of Plant Sciences
hshu@ethz.ch
Universitaetstrasse 2
8032 Zuerich (Switzerland)