Arabidopsis TRB proteins function in H3K4me3 demethylation by recruiting the JMJ14 complex

Histone marks H3K27me3 and H3K4me3 are mutual exclusive over plant genome, however, the underlying mechanism is not fully understood. Arabidopsis telomeric repeat binding factors (TRBs) are required for the deposition of H3K27me3 by recruiting Polycomb repressive complexes (PRCs). Here, we demonstrate that TRBs associate and colocalize with JUMONJI 14 (JMJ14) over gene body regions and trigger H3K4me3 demethylation. The trb1/2/3 triple mutant and jmj14-1 mutant show an increased level of H3K4me3 over TRB and JMJ14 binding sites, resulting in up-regulation of their targeting genes. Furthermore, tethering TRBs to the promoter region of genes with an artificial zinc finger successfully triggers target gene silencing. These results suggest that TRB proteins cooperate with PRC2 and JMJ14 complex to repress target gene by H3K4me3 demethylation and H3K27me3 deposition. This dataset includes ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, WGBS and BS-PCR to understand the molecular mechanism of Arabidopsis TRB proteins.