Epigenetics dynamics under complex stress conditions in Arabidopsis

Plants need to constantly react and adapt to various environmental conditions, utilizing the great plasticity of how their genomes can be organized, transcribed, replicated, repaired, recombined, and protected against mobile elements. One factor involved in these activities in most eukaryotes is DNA methylation – a covalent attachment of a methyl group to cytosine residues.

DNA methylation was found to play an adaptive role under various stress conditions. Thus far, most studies focused on single or separated stress conditions. Here we investigated the dynamics of DNA methylation and genome expression in Arabidopsis plants under various combinatorial stress stimuli that mimic natural environmental conditions.

First, we identified sets of genes and transposons that react to particular stress stimuli versus ones that are common to multiple stresses. We also show the synergistic effect of transcriptional regulations under single versus complex stress conditions. Additionally, we show the dynamics of genome expression under short and long stress exposure. Finally, we profiled methylome changes in the various stress conditions and compared them to transcriptome data. Overall, our data differentiate between particular and common stress epigenetic regulations and aim to resolve causality between transcription and methylation.