Epigenetic Control of a Maize Anthocyanin Regulatory Gene

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The cells of every higher organism, whether plant or animal, face the problem of how to fit all their DNA into the nucleus while still allowing the genes to be accessible to the RNA synthesis machinery needed to turn those genes on at proper times in development. The universal solution to this dilemma is to wind the DNA around proteins to form a DNA-protein complex called chromatin. Genes in loosely wound chromatin are accessible to RNA synthesis machinery and are actively expressed, whereas genes in tightly wound chromatin are less accessible and are inactive. Winding is reversibly controlled by chemical alterations to the DNA or the proteins that make up the chromatin. Understanding how these chemical changes are regulated is the focus of this project. Experiments are aimed at analyzing the expression of the maize gene, Pl-Blotched, which controls the synthesis of purple pigments. Pl-Blotched plants have a variegated pattern of pigmentation that is associated with more tightly wound chromatin than usual and a unique pattern of chemical alteration to the Pl-Blotched DNA. To understand how these chromatin features are controlled, mutants with altered pigmentation have been isolated. To study how these mutants control the expression of Pl-Blotched, experiments will be conducted to determine what specific changes they induce in the DNA or proteins of Pl-Blotched chromatin. The results of these studies will contribute to our understanding of how gene expression can be controlled by chromatin in a diverse array of organisms that use chromatin-based mechanisms for regulating genes during growth and development. This project will be carried out by graduate and undergraduate students and will thus provide the students with strong training in genetics and genomics, with particular emphasis on teamwork and collaboration.