bZIP11 ATAC-seq

Basic Leucine zipper 11 (bZIP11) is a transcription factor that regulates low energy situations in plants. Although the chromatin landscape has been surveyed in response to plant hormones previously, regions of the genome made accessible by a single transcription factor has been given little attention to date. To achieve a profile of chromatin patterning in response to bZIP11, we performed ATAC-seq (Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin with high-throughput sequencing) on Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) mesophyll protoplasts. Wild-type (accession: Columbia 0) plants were compared to transgenic plants, containing constructs with chemically inducible overexpression of bZIP11 into the nucleus. The ATAC-seq reads were mapped to the Arabidopsis genome (TAIR10), and accessible regions were identified and categorised using bioinformatic methods. We identified, on average, 10,000 regions made differentially accessible by bZIP11 induction, over 8,420 different genes. Our study provides a resource for understanding how bZIP11 regulates the genome at the chromatin level and we have compared this to locations of bZIP11 binding sites. In addition, it provides an example of the impact of a single-transcription factor on a whole genome.