Arabidopsis floral initiator SKB1 confers high salt tolerance by regulating transcription and pre-mRNA splicing through altering histone H4R3 and small nuclear ribonucleoprotein LSM4 methylation

This study examines how histone modification confers salt stress in Arabidopsis. The floral initiator SKB1 is found to mediate the plant’s response to salt stress by altering the methylation status of histone H4R3 and of the small nuclear ribonucleoprotein (snRNP) LSM4, and thereby affecting the expression of stress-responsive genes. Total RNA was isolated with Trizol reagent (Invitrogen) from eleven11-day-old seedlings of the wild type and skb1-1 mutant without or with 200 mM NaCl for 6 hrs. 29k Arabidopsis Genome Array hybridization was carried out by CapitalBio Corporation (Beijing, China).