PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Anna Brestovitsky
AU  - Daphne Ezer
AU  - Sascha Waidmann
AU  - Sarah L. Maslen
AU  - Martin Balcerowicz
AU  - Sandra Cortijo
AU  - Varodom Charoensawan
AU  - Claudia Martinho
AU  - Daniela Rhodes
AU  - Claudia Jonak
AU  - Philip A Wigge
TI  - DEK influences the trade-off between growth and arrest via H2A.Z-nucleosomes in Arabidopsis
AID  - 10.1101/829226
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 829226
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/04/829226.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/04/829226.full
AB  - The decision of whether to grow and proliferate or to restrict growth and develop resilience to stress is a key biological trade-off. In plants, constitutive growth results in increased sensitivity to environmental stress1,2. The underlying mechanisms controlling this decision are however not well understood. We used temperature as a cue to discover regulators of this process in plants, as it both enhances growth and development rates within a specific range and is also a stress at extremes. We found that the conserved chromatin-associated protein DEK plays a central role in balancing the response between growth and arrest in Arabidopsis, and it does this via H2A.Z-nucleosomes. DEK target genes show two distinct categories of chromatin architecture based on the distribution of H2A.Z in +1 nucleosome and gene body, and these predict induction or repression by DEK. We show that these chromatin signatures of DEK target genes are conserved in human cells, suggesting that DEK may act through an evolutionarily conserved mechanism to control the balance between growth and arrest in plants and animals.