The LEAFY floral regulator displays pioneer transcription factor properties

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  • Xuelei Lai
  • Romain Blanc-Mathieu
  • Loïc GrandVuillemin
  • Ying Huang
  • Stigliani, Arnaud
  • Jérémy Lucas
  • Emmanuel Thévenon
  • Jeanne Loue-Manifel
  • Laura Turchi
  • Hussein Daher
  • Eugenia Brun-Hernandez
  • Gilles Vachon
  • David Latrasse
  • Moussa Benhamed
  • Renaud Dumas
  • Chloe Zubieta
  • François Parcy

Pioneer transcription factors (TFs) are a special category of TFs with the capacity to bind to closed chromatin regions in which DNA is wrapped around histones and may be highly methylated. Subsequently, pioneer TFs are able to modify the chromatin state to initiate gene expression. In plants, LEAFY (LFY) is a master floral regulator and has been suggested to act as a pioneer TF in Arabidopsis. Here, we demonstrate that LFY is able to bind both methylated and non-methylated DNA using a combination of in vitro genome-wide binding experiments and structural modeling. Comparisons between regions bound by LFY in vivo and chromatin accessibility data suggest that a subset of LFY bound regions is occupied by nucleosomes. We confirm that LFY is able to bind nucleosomal DNA in vitro using reconstituted nucleosomes. Finally, we show that constitutive LFY expression in seedling tissues is sufficient to induce chromatin accessibility in the LFY direct target genes APETALA1 and AGAMOUS. Taken together, our study suggests that LFY possesses key pioneer TF features that contribute to launching the floral gene expression program.

Original languageEnglish
JournalMolecular Plant
Volume14
Issue number5
Pages (from-to)829-837
Number of pages9
ISSN1674-2052
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author

    Research areas

  • chromatin remodeling, flower development, gene regulation, pioneer transcription factor

ID: 262845051