Abstract (eng)
The acetylation of histone tails is a reversible post-translational modification, and thus provides a flexible mechanism for transcriptional regulation. The controlled action of histone acetyltransferases (HATs) and histone deacetylases (HDACs) spezifiziert specifies the acetylation levels of histones and is therefore linked to transcriptional activation and repression, respectively. The Arabidopsis histone deacetylase HDA6 is involved in RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM), a pathway required for silencing of transgenes, transposons and ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes. Beside its function in RdDM, HDA6 has been implicated in flowering, senescence and jasmonate, ABA and salt stress responses. However, neither interaction partners nor complexes containing HDA6 have been identified so far.
In this work, we investigated the role of HDA6 in the RdDM pathway and the mechanisms of its recruitment to RdDM targets. We have characterized three new mutant alleles of HDA6 that code for enzymatically inactive proteins. Interestingly, they all show transcriptional reactivation of several known RdDM targets without a decrease of DNA methylation. This result was surprising, since HDA6 has been implicated in the maintenance of DNA methylation, a major hallmark of RdDM silencing. It also indicates that methylation is not sufficient for silencing in RdDM.
In a large yeast two hybrid screen, we identified FIBRILLARIN and an RRM domain protein as possible HDA6 interaction partners. Additionally, we confirmed these interactions in planta using bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC). Both proteins have RNA-binding domains, suggesting that HDA6 can be recruited directly via siRNAs in RdDM, which is consistent with a methylation-independent recruitment model. Mass-spectrometry on immunoprecipitated epitope-tagged HDA6 identified several plant orthologs of mammalian and yeast components of the SIN3 complex and represents the first purified HDA6 complex from Arabidopsis. Additionally, our study indicates that the Arabidopsis SIN3-like complex is not involved in RdDM and highlights possibly separate roles of HDA6 in RdDM and non-RdDM silencing.