Histone methylation and acetylation play a crucial role in response to developmental cues and environmental changes. Previously, we employed mass spectrometry to identify histone modifications such as H3K27ac and H3K36me3 in the model diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum, which have been shown to be important for transcriptional activation in animal and plant species. To further investigate their evolutionary implications, we utilized chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by deep sequencing (ChIP-Seq) and explored their genome-wide distribution in P. tricornutum. Our study aimed to determine their role in transcriptional regulation of genes and transposable elements (TEs) and their co-occurrence with other histone marks. Our results revealed that H3K27ac and H3K36me3 were predominantly localized in promoters and genic regions indicating a high conservation pattern with studies of the same marks in plants and animals. Furthermore, we report the diversity of genes encoding H3 lysine 36 (H3K36) trimethylation-specific methyltransferase in microalgae leveraging diverse sequencing resources including the Marine Microbial Eukaryote Transcriptome Sequencing Project database (MMETSP). Our study expands the repertoire of epigenetic marks in a model microalga and provides valuable insights into the evolutionary context of epigenetic-mediated gene regulation. These findings shed light on the intricate interplay between histone modifications and gene expression in microalgae, contributing to our understanding of the broader epigenetic landscape in eukaryotic organisms.
Keywords: epigenetics; evolution; microalgae; post translational modifications of histones.