Widespread imprinting of transposable elements and variable genes in the maize endosperm

PLoS Genet. 2021 Apr 8;17(4):e1009491. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009491. eCollection 2021 Apr.

Abstract

Fertilization and seed development is a critical time in the plant life cycle, and coordinated development of the embryo and endosperm are required to produce a viable seed. In the endosperm, some genes show imprinted expression where transcripts are derived primarily from one parental genome. Imprinted gene expression has been observed across many flowering plant species, though only a small proportion of genes are imprinted. Understanding how imprinted expression arises has been complicated by the reliance on single nucleotide polymorphisms between alleles to enable testing for imprinting. Here, we develop a method to use whole genome assemblies of multiple genotypes to assess for imprinting of both shared and variable portions of the genome using data from reciprocal crosses. This reveals widespread maternal expression of genes and transposable elements with presence-absence variation within maize and across species. Most maternally expressed features are expressed primarily in the endosperm, suggesting that maternal de-repression in the central cell facilitates expression. Furthermore, maternally expressed TEs are enriched for maternal expression of the nearest gene, and read alignments over maternal TE-gene pairs indicate that these are fused rather than independent transcripts.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Alleles
  • DNA Methylation / genetics
  • DNA Transposable Elements / genetics*
  • Endosperm / genetics*
  • Endosperm / growth & development
  • Gene Expression Profiling
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / genetics*
  • Genome, Plant / genetics
  • Genomic Imprinting / genetics
  • Molecular Sequence Annotation
  • Seeds / genetics
  • Seeds / growth & development
  • Zea mays / genetics*

Substances

  • DNA Transposable Elements

Grants and funding

This work was funded by grants from USDA-NIFA (usda.gov) 2016-67013-24747 (S.N.A., and N.M.S.), NSF (nsf.gov) IOS-1546899 (P.Z. and N.M.S.), NSF (nsf.gov) DGE-1545453 (K.H.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.