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Article Addendum

Chromatin remodelling and the Arabidopsis biological clock

Paloma Más

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Plants, as sessile organisms, rely on accurate time measurement to synchronize their physiology and development to the most favorable time-of-day or time-of-year. The biological clock is the endogenous mechanism responsible for the integration of the photoperiodic information thus coordinating metabolism in resonance with the environmental cycle. Despite the importance of circadian clock function in plant reproduction and survival, we are still far from understanding the specific molecular mechanisms governing the rhythmic expression of clock components. Recently, we have described a new mechanism of circadian regulation that involves changes in chromatin structure at the TOC1 (TIMING OF CAB EXPRESSION 1) locus. The mechanism is defined by activators and repressors that are precisely coordinated to favor a hyper- or hypo-acetylated state of histones that leads to TOC1 transcriptional activation or repression, respectively. The clock-controlled rhythms in histone acetylation/deacetylation at the TOC1 promoter are differentially modulated by day-length or photoperiod suggesting a mechanism by which plants ensure the phase of entrainment in physiological and developmental outputs.

Authors

Paloma Más

Consorcio CSIC-IRTA, Laboratory of Plant Molecular Genetics, Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona (IBMB-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

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