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Plant RNA Biology

Beyond the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology

New Publication!!!

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We are happy to announce the acceptance of our recent work on viral suppressors for publication on eLife! You can take a sneak peak here.

In brief:

We propose a model for TrAP silencing suppression as an attenuator of the Transcriptional Gene Silencing of the viral chromatin, by inhibiting the histone methyltransferase KYP to evade host surveillance.

We base our model in the following findings:

  • TrAP elicits developmental anomalies phenocopying several TGS mutants.
  • TrAP reduces the repressive H3K9me2 mark and CHH DNA methylation.
  • TrAP reactivates numerous endogenous KYP-repressed loci in vivo.
  • TrAP interacts with the catalytic domain of KYP and inhibits its trans-methylation activity in vitro.
  • KYP binds to the viral chromatin and controls its methylation to combat virus infection.
  • Plants lacking KYP (kyp mutants) support systemic infection of Geminivirus lacking functional TrAP protein.
We would like to acknowledge our colleagues in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, the Institute for Plant Genomics and Biotechnology, and the Genomics & Bioinformatics Service at Texas A&M University, who have greatly enriched our work by their expertise and by allowing us to use their facilities. Particularly, we acknowledge Paul De Figueiredo, Hisashi Koiwa, Craig Kaplan, Hays Rye, Charlie Johnson, and Richard Metz.