Xiaofeng Cao / Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology
Epigenetic regulation plays fundamental roles in modulating chromatin-based processes and shaping the epigenome in multicellular eukaryotes, including plants. Many enzymes modify DNA and histones and their functions require targeting or binding to the target chromatin loci, and subsequent triggering of the enzymatic activity. How epigenetic factors recognize their target loci hiding in the vast genomic DNA sequence remains a long-standing mystery. During the past several years, we are devoted to studying the complex and dynamic chromatin-targeting mechanisms of Arabidopsis Jumonji C (JmjC)-domain-containing lysine (K)-specific demethylases. Here we will focus on our recent advances in understanding the recruitment of histone H3K27 demethylases JMJ12 (Nat Genet, 2011, 2016; Nat Commun, 2019; Cell Res, 2019) and JMJ13 (Nat Commun, 2019), as well as histone H3K4 demethylases JMJ14 (Cell Res, 2010; Cell Discov, 2015; Plant Cell, 2018) and JMJ16 (Plant Cell, 2019) to specific genomic regions and their roles in plant development.