Methylation of histone H3 lysine 27 (H3K27) is widely recognized as a transcriptionally repressive chromatin modification but the mechanism of repression remains unclear. We devised and implemented a forward genetic scheme to identify factors required for H3K27 methylation-mediated silencing in the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa and identified a bromo-adjacent homology (BAH)-plant homeodomain (PHD)-containing protein, EPR-1 (effector of polycomb repression 1; NCU07505). EPR-1 associates with H3K27-methylated chromatin, and loss of EPR-1 de-represses H3K27-methylated genes without loss of H3K27 methylation. EPR-1 is not fungal-specific; orthologs of EPR-1 are present in a diverse array of eukaryotic lineages, suggesting an ancestral EPR-1 was a component of a primitive Polycomb repression pathway.
Keywords: H3K27 methylation; Polycomb repressive complex; epigenetics; facultative heterochromatin; histone reader.