Identification of a novel fungal PRC2 accessory subunit

Here we utilize a forward genetics approach in Neurospora crassa to identify novel effectors of Polycomb repression. We recovered two mutant alleles of a gene (NCU04278), which we determined encodes a PRC2 accessory subunit (PAS). PAS is not essential for all H3K27 methylation, but rather its absence leads to losses of H3K27 methylation concentrated near chromosome ends. ChIP-seq: We perform H3K27me2/3 ChIP-seq on biological replicates of ∆pas and ∆npf strains. We compared H3K27 methylation levels to previously published wild type data (Bicocca et al. 2018, GSE118495) RNA-seq: We performed polyA-RNAseq on biological replicates of ∆pas and wild type strains and compared gene expression levels to previously published data sets from wild type and ∆set-7 strains (Klocko et al. 2016, GSE82222).