Back

MORC proteins regulate transcription factor binding by mediating chromatin compaction in active chromatin regions

Zhong, Z.; Xue, Y.; Harris, C. J.; Wang, M.; Li, Z.; Ke, Y.; Jami-Alahmadi, Y.; Feng, S.; Wohlschlegel, J. A.; Jacobsen, S. E.

2022-11-03 plant biology
10.1101/2022.11.01.514783 bioRxiv
Show abstract

BackgroundThe Microrchidia (MORC) proteins are a family of evolutionarily conserved GHKL-type ATPases involved in chromatin compaction and gene silencing. Arabidopsis MORC proteins act in the RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) pathway, where they act as molecular tethers to ensure the efficient establishment of RdDM and de novo gene silencing. However, MORC proteins also have RdDM-independent functions; although, their underlying mechanisms are unknown. ResultsIn this study, we examined regions of MORC binding where RdDM does not occur in order to shed light on the RdDM-independent functions of MORC proteins. We found that MORC proteins compact chromatin and reduce DNA accessibility to transcription factors (TFs), thereby repressing gene expression. We also found that MORC-mediated repression of gene expression was particularly important under conditions of stress. We showed that MORC proteins regulate TFs through either direct or indirect interactions, and these TFs can in some cases regulate their own transcription, resulting in feedforward loops. ConclusionsOur findings provide insights into the molecular mechanisms of MORC-mediated chromatin compaction and transcription regulation.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.