An ambitious EC-funded research initiative on epigenetics advancing towards systems biology

Telomeres contribute to maintain genome stability, which requires the integrity of their length and chromatin organization. Telomeric DNA usually contains tandem repeats of a short GC rich motif, which are also present at interstitial chromosomal loci in different model organisms. These ITSs have been related to chromosomal aberrations and diseases. However, their functions remain unknown.

We have developed two different approaches to analyze the chromatin structure of Arabidopsis thaliana telomeres independently of ITSs and have found that, whereas telomeres exhibit euchromatic features, subtelomeric regions and ITSs, as an average, are heterochromatic. One of these approaches is based on the analysis of ChIP-seq data and can be easily applied to different model systems (http://www.nature.com/protocolexchange/protocols/2675).

We plan to perform ChIP-seq experiments and analyses of Arabidopsis mutants using antibodies against heterochromatic and euchromatic marks. Our goal is to understand how epigenetic modifications relate to telomeric regions, ITSs and to their functions.

Involved in the project:

• María I. Vaquero-Sedas