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Regulatory Factors of Leaf Senescence are Affected in Arabidopsis Plants Overexpressing the Histone Methyltransferase SUVH2

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Abstract

Leaf senescence involves extensive reprogramming of gene expression effectuating the complex biochemical and structural changes that occur during the last stage of leaf development. In a large-scale transcriptomic approach in Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh., using qRT-PCR, gene expression for more than 380 transcriptional regulators was shown to be regulated in a senescence-specific manner. Overexpression of SUVH2 histone methyltransferase, which was previously reported by Ay and others (Plant J 58:333–346, 2009) to delay leaf senescence, affected gene expression of about 50 % of these senescence-related regulatory factors (SRRFs), whereas the other half was regulated during senescence similar to wild type. Thereby, the senescence-related transcription factor families AP2-EREBP, C2H2, NAC, and WRKY are affected most notably. This suggests a direct or indirect locus-specific mode of SUVH2 action. Interestingly, we found that 45 of the identified SRRFs possess an ERF-associated amphiphilic repression motif, indicating that EAR motif-mediated transcriptional repression could be a principal mechanism within regulation of senescence. Furthermore, about 30 % of the SRRFs are predicted as putative targets of the ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL5 (HY5) bZIP transcription factor. This suggests that HY5-dependent processes play an important role within the regulatory network of leaf senescence. Moreover, these processes seem to be specifically affected in plants overexpressing SUVH2. Our results give new insights into the complex regulatory network of senescence-associated processes and the specific involvement of chromatin alterations.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Max Planck Institute in Golm-Potsdam for the opportunity to perform the expression analysis with the TF platform. Furthermore, we thank Michael Röser for his assistance with the statistical analysis of the TF platform data. The project was supported by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Commission.

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  1. Tina Seidensticker

    Present address: Department Gene Bank, Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crops, Correnstr. 3, Gatersleben, Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Physiology, Institute of Biology, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Weinbergweg 10, 06120, Halle, Germany

    Nicole Ay, Ulrike Raum & Klaus Humbeck

  2. Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam-Golm, Germany

    Salma Balazadeh

  3. Department of Genetics, Institute of Biology, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Weinbergweg 10, 06120, Halle, Germany

    Andreas Fischer & Gunter Reuter

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  1. Nicole Ay
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Correspondence to Klaus Humbeck.

Electronic supplementary material

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Supplementary DS 1 Expression raw data of all 1,870 analyzed regulatory genes (XLSX 3829 kb)

Supplementary DS 2 Significant regulated genes in wild-type and the SUVH2-oe line (XLSX 355 kb)

Supplementary DS 3 Direct comparison of regulated genes between wild-type and the SUVH2-oe line (XLSX 244 kb)

Supplementary DS 4 Clusters 1–5 assigned genes from k-mean clustering (XLSX 282 kb)

Supplementary DS 5 qRT-PCR primers of TF platform and candidate genes analyzed in senescence kinetics (XLS 484 kb)

344_2013_9384_MOESM6_ESM.jpg

Supplementary Fig. 1 Localization of SUVH2 in wild-type and suvh2 mutant plants. Immunostaining with a SUVH2-specific antibody (α-SUVH2) of wild-type (WT) and suvh2 mutant interphase nuclei. The suvh2 T-DNA insertion line GABI-Kat 516A07 was obtained from the Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre (NASC). Homozygous plants were used for analysis. Scale bars = 5 μm (JPEG 66 kb)

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Ay, N., Raum, U., Balazadeh, S. et al. Regulatory Factors of Leaf Senescence are Affected in Arabidopsis Plants Overexpressing the Histone Methyltransferase SUVH2. J Plant Growth Regul 33, 119–136 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00344-013-9384-y

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