Chromatin is indispensible for diverse plant functions including development, reproduction, TE-elements defense and stress responses. Genetic analyses have demonstrated that disrupting chromatin-related pathways lead to various phenotypic defects. However, there have been difficulties in placing chromatin functions within regulatory pathways. For most processes affected by chromatin-related mutants, it is unclear whether chromatin possesses an instructive as oppose to merely supportive roles in transcriptional regulations. Diversities of chromatin structure are observed at different scales and may all have certain regulatory functions. Intensities of chromatin staining by DNA binding dyes at microscopic level are reflected by the differential enrichment of covalent histone modifications at molecular level. We tackle the biological function of chromatin at both cellular and molecular levels. Throughout the last decade, we have developed a in planta GFP:LacI-LacO system to track behaviors of chromatin fibers at over 250 loci in real-time. More recently, we use the high-throughput ChIP-Seq profiling of the epigenome together with visualization techniques to discover the landscapes of chromatin modifications as well as their biological functions.
Chromatin is indispensible for diverse plant functions including development, reproduction, TE-elements defense and stress responses. Genetic analyses have demonstrated that disrupting chromatin-related pathways lead to various phenotypic defects. However, there have been difficulties in placing chromatin functions within regulatory pathways. For most processes affected by chromatin-related mutants, it is unclear whether chromatin possesses an instructive as oppose to merely supportive roles in transcriptional regulations. Diversities of chromatin structure are observed at different scales and may all have certain regulatory functions. Intensities of chromatin staining by DNA binding dyes at microscopic level are reflected by the differential enrichment of covalent histone modifications at molecular level. We tackle the biological function of chromatin at both cellular and molecular levels. Throughout the last decade, we have developed a in planta GFP:LacI-LacO system to track behaviors of chromatin fibers at over 250 loci in real-time. More recently, we use the high-throughput ChIP-Seq profiling of the epigenome together with visualization techniques to discover the landscapes of chromatin modifications as well as their biological functions.
