An antagonistic epigenetic mechanism regulating gene expression in pollen revealed through single-nucleus multiomics

MBD6 and MBD7 complexes compete against one another for gene silencing and activation, however, the mechanisms are poorly understood. These microscopy results support other experiments in our manuscript that demonstrate MBD6 and MBD7 compete with one another DNA methylation sites, accumulate at DNA methylation using similar mechanisms, and antagonize one another at those sites. Furthermore, we express MBD7 using its endogenous promoter and reveal a unique localization pattern to primarily around the chromocenters near the nucleolus and not always to all chromocenters as reported previously. 

Methods
All of this data was collected using an LSM 980 confocal microscope and across experiments laser settings and magnifications were kept constant. All experiments were performed on live plant tissue either arabidopsis 2-3 week old seedling roots or tobacco leaves.