Open AccessCryptochrome 2 extensively regulates transcription of the chloroplast genome in tomato
Author(s) -
Facella Paolo,
Carbone Fabrizio,
Placido Antonio,
Perrotta Gaetano
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
febs open bio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.718
H-Index - 31
ISSN - 2211-5463
DOI - 10.1002/2211-5463.12082
Subject(s) - cryptochrome , chloroplast , genome , transcription (linguistics) , biology , transcription factor , computational biology , genetics , microbiology and biotechnology , gene , linguistics , circadian clock , philosophy
Light plays a key role in the regulation of many physiological processes required for plant and chloroplast development. Plant cryptochromes (crys) play an important role in monitoring, capturing, and transmitting the light stimuli. In this study, we analyzed the effects of CRY 2 overexpression on transcription of tomato chloroplast genome by a tiling array, containing about 90 000 overlapping probes (5‐nucleotide resolution). We profiled transcription in leaves of wild‐type and CRY 2‐overexpressing plants grown in a diurnal cycle, to generate a comprehensive map of chloroplast transcription and to monitor potential specific modulations of the chloroplast transcriptome induced by the overexpression of CRY 2. Our results demonstrate that CRY 2 is a master gene of transcriptional regulation in the tomato chloroplast. In fact, it modulates the day/night mRNA abundance of about 58% of the 114 ORF s. The effect of CRY 2 includes a differential extension of some transcripts at their 5′‐end, according to the period of the day. We observed that the influence of CRY 2 on chloroplast transcription is not limited to coding RNA ; a great number of putative noncoding micro RNA also showed differential accumulation pattern. To our knowledge, this is the first study that highlights how a photoreceptor affects the day/night transcription of the chloroplast genome.