Defective histone deacetylation results in alternative polyadenylation in Arabidopsis
Juncheng Lin1#, Fuyu Hung2#, Congting Ye1, Liwei Hong1, Keqiang Wu2*, Qingshun Q. Li1*
1College of the Environment and Ecology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian 361102, China;
2Institute of Plant Biology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan 10617
Histone deacetylases (HDACs) is critical for maintaining nucleosome structure thus regulating gene expression in eukaryotes. It was reported that nucleosomes regulate the usage of polyadenylation sites in humans, but the role of HDACs in regulating polyadenylation was never uncovered. Histone deacetylase HDA6 is required for silencing of transposable elements and affects a series of phenotypes in Arabidopsis. By employing Poly(A)-tag sequencing (PAT-seq) approach, we found that defective HDA6 resulted in genome-wide alternative polyadenylation (APA). Moreover, most significantly up-regulated transcripts use alternative poly(A) sites in hda6. Meanwhile, ChIP-seq revealed that genes with up-regulated transcripts were highly acetylated by comparing to genes with down-regulated or non-changed transcripts, as expected in hda6. More interestingly, poly(A) signal usages of differentially expressed transcripts are distinguished by the acetylation level around poly(A) sites in hda6. These results indicate that HDA6 regulates polyadenylation in a histone acetylation dependent manner in Arabidopsis.