PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Ekaterina Gushchanskaia AU - Ruben Esse AU - Qicheng Ma AU - Nelson Lau AU - Alla Grishok TI - The interplay between small RNA pathways shapes chromatin landscapes in <em>C. elegans</em> AID - 10.1101/320713 DP - 2018 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 320713 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/11/28/320713.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/11/28/320713.full AB - The nematode C. elegans contains several types of endogenous small interfering RNAs (endo-siRNAs) produced by RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) complexes. Both “silencing” siRNAs bound by Worm-specific Argonautes (WAGO) and “activating” siRNAs bound by the CSR-1 Argonaute require the DRH-3 helicase, an RdRP component. Here we show that, in the drh-3(ne4253) mutant deficient in RdRP-produced secondary endo-siRNAs, the silencing histone mark H3K9me3 is largely depleted, whereas in the csr-1 partial loss-of-function mutant this mark is ectopically deposited on CSR-1 target genes. Moreover, we observe ectopic H3K9me3 at enhancer elements in both drh-3 and csr-1 partial loss-of-function mutants and describe small RNAs matching enhancers. Finally, we detect accumulation of H3K27me3 at highly expressed genes in the drh-3(ne4253) mutant, which correlates with their reduced transcription. Our study shows that when abundant RdRP-produced siRNAs are depleted, there is ectopic elevation of noncoding RNAs linked to increase in silencing chromatin marks. Moreover, our results suggest that enhancer small RNAs may guide local H3K9 methylation.