A novel protein complex that regulates active DNA demethylation in ArabidopsisOO

• Published in: 植物学报（英文版） 2021, Vol.63 (4), p.772-786
• Main Authors: Pan Liu, Wen-Feng Nie, Xiansong Xiong, Yuhua Wang, Yuwei Jiang, Pei Huang, Xueqiang Lin, Guochen Qin, Huan Huang, Qingfeng Niu, Jiamu Du, Zhaobo Lang, Rosa Lozano-Duran, Jian-Kang Zhu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1672-9072

Active DNA demethylation is critical for altering DNA methylation patterns and regulating gene expression. The 5-methylcytosine DNA glycosylase/lyase ROS1 initiates a base-excision repair pathway for active DNA demethylation and is required for the prevention of DNA hypermethylation at 1000s of genomic re-gions in Arabidopsis. How ROS1 is regulated and targeted to specific genomic regions is not well un-derstood. Here, we report the discovery of an Ara-bidopsis protein complex that contains ROS1, regu-lates ROS1 gene expression, and likely targets the ROS1 protein to specific genomic regions. ROS1 physically interacts with a WD40 domain protein (RWD40), which in turn interacts with a methyl-DNA binding protein (RMB1) as well as with a zinc finger and homeobox domain protein (RHD1). RMB1 binds to DNA that is methylated in any sequence context, and this binding is necessary for its function in vivo. Loss-of-function mutations in RWD40, RMB1, or RHD1 cause DNA hypermethylation at several tested genomic regions independently of the known ROS1 regulator IDM1. Because the hypermethylated ge-nomic regions include the DNA methylation mon-itoring sequence in the ROS1 promoter, plants mu-tated in RWD40, RMB1, or RHD1 show increased ROS1 expression. Importantly, ROS1 binding to the ROS1 promoter requires RWD40, RMB1, and RHD1, suggesting that this complex dictates ROS1 targeting to this locus. Our results demonstrate that ROS1 forms a protein complex with RWD40, RMB1, and RHD1, and that this novel complex regulates active DNA demethylation at several endogenous loci in Arabidopsis.