多梳家族（Polycomb Group, PcG）是调控生殖发育的重要表观修饰复合体。这一古老的基因家族在进化过程中经历了多次复制和功能特化，因此高等植物中PcG组分的组合作用模式既有协同性又有特异性。然而对不同PcG组合特异调控植物生殖发育各阶段的研究还停留于对单一位点的解析。PcG是通过表观修饰抑制大量组织特异性表达的基因实现对各发育阶段特异性调控的，因此从基因组尺度针对PcG各组分的特异结合位点及表观调控作用开展系统的研究具有重要意义，而这需要优化相关高通量数据的实验生成和分析方法。在前期工作中，申请人结合高通量实验和已开发的数据定量比较模型，发现不同PcG组合调控了不同的发育阶段，而其特异性作用位点与生殖发育相关转录因子的结合密切相关。本项目拟在此基础上，系统解析不同PcG组分协同调控生殖发育的具体机制，并深入探索PcG特异性招募方式及转录因子在PcG特异性调控发育过程的重要作用。

Polycome Group (PcG) proteins play a major role in regulation of reproductive developmental programs via establishment of repressive epigenetic marks. As ancient machinery for developmental regulation, PcG employed multiple protein families which underwent duplications and diversifications, and thus they share common targets, but also have specialized functions. However, current studies about the specific effect of different PcGs in regulating plant reproductive development mainly focused on single genomic locus. Since the stage-specific regulation of plant development by PcGs is achieved by epigenetic repression of large numbers of tissue biased genes, to investigate the binding specificity of different PcGs and their roles in epigenetic regulations is of great importance, which relies on effective optimization of the methods about data generation and downstream analyses. In our preliminary works, based on high-throughput experiments and our model for quantitative comparison of ChIP-seq data, we found different combinations of PcGs concertedly regulate distinct stages of reproductive development, and notably, the different epigenetic modification sites controlled by different combinations of PcGs are closely associated with specific binding of transcription factors controlling reproductive development. Based on these findings, we plan to further dissect the mechanism underlying the synergic effect of different combinations of PcGs in regulating reproductive development through integrative analyses of genetic, biochemical and high-throughput data, and explore the mechanism underlying the selective recruitment of PcGs, as well as their coordinated role with TFs, in order to extend our understanding about the specificity of epigenetic machinery in controlling plant reproductive programs.