Natural variation of H3K27me3 modification between two Arabidopsis accessions and its inheritance in hybrid. Arabidopsis thaliana

Mechanism, inheritance patterns and biological significance remain unclear. Here, we generated genome-wide integrated maps of H3K27me3 modification and transcriptome for Col, C24 and their F1 hybrid, and their clf mutants. We found that H3K27me3 modification profiles were divergent between Col and C24, and were inherited mainly additively in hybrid. By comparing H3K27me3 modification ratio between parents to allelic H3K27me3 modification ratio in hybrid, we identified cis- and trans-regulatory divergence for H3K27me3 modification variation between Col and C24, and found that cis-regulatory divergence was the predominant contributor to H3K27me3 variation. The majority of genes with both cis- and trans-regulatory divergence displayed "cis-trans" interaction, whereas "cis+trans" interaction resulted in higher magnitude of H3K27me3 variation. H3K27me3 modification variation was negatively correlated with gene expression variation between Col and C24, both of which might rise from the same cis-regulatory divergence. Moreover, cis-regulatory divergence could lead to the concurrent allelic H3K27me3 modification bias and allelic gene expression bias for auxin metabolic genes and stimulus responsive genes in Col×C24 hybrid. Natural variation of H3K27me3 modification and gene expression were changed upon CLF mutation, and heterosis, especially best-parent hetereosis, was largely compromised in clf hybrid. Together, our study provided a comprehensive analysis of regulatory divergence for natural variation of histone modification and its association with differential gene expression between Arabidopsis accessions and growth vigor in hybrid. Overall design: Genome-wide integrated maps and allelic expression of mRNA and histone modifications (H3K27me3) in the shoots of 14 day old seedlings of two Arabidopsis(Col and C24) and their hybrids (Col x C24).