Browsing by Author "Slotkin, R. Keith"
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- Arabidopsis bioinformatics resources: The current state, challenges, and priorities for the futureDoherty, Colleen; Friesner, Joanna; Gregory, Brian; Loraine, Ann; Megraw, Molly; Meyers, Blake C.; Provart, Nicholas J.; Slotkin, R. Keith; Town, Chris; Assmann, Sarah M.; Axtell, Michael J.; Berardini, Tanya; Chen, Sixue; Gehan, Malia; Huala, Eva; Jaiswal, Pankaj; Larson, Stephen; Li, Song; May, Sean; Michael, Todd; Pires, J. Chris; Topp, Chris; Walley, Justin; Wurtele, Eve (Wiley, 2019-01-01)Effective research, education, and outreach efforts by the Arabidopsis thaliana community, as well as other scientific communities that depend on Arabidopsis resources, depend vitally on easily available and publicly-shared resources. These resources include reference genome sequence data and an ever-increasing number of diverse data sets and data types. TAIR (The Arabidopsis Information Resource) and Araport (originally named the Arabidopsis Information Portal) are community informatics resources that provide tools, data, and applications to the more than 30,000 researchers worldwide that use in their work either Arabidopsis as a primary system of study or data derived from Arabidopsis. Four years after Araport's establishment, the IAIC held another workshop to evaluate the current status of Arabidopsis Informatics and chart a course for future research and development. The workshop focused on several challenges, including the need for reliable and current annotation, community-defined common standards for data and metadata, and accessible and user-friendly repositories/tools/methods for data integration and visualization. Solutions envisioned included (a) a centralized annotation authority to coalesce annotation from new groups, establish a consistent naming scheme, distribute this format regularly and frequently, and encourage and enforce its adoption. (b) Standards for data and metadata formats, which are essential, but challenging when comparing across diverse genotypes and in areas with less-established standards (e.g., phenomics, metabolomics). Community-established guidelines need to be developed. (c) A searchable, central repository for analysis and visualization tools. Improved versioning and user access would make tools more accessible. Workshop participants proposed a "one-stop shop" website, an Arabidopsis "Super-Portal" to link tools, data resources, programmatic standards, and best practice descriptions for each data type. This must have community buy-in and participation in its establishment and development to encourage adoption.
- The Arabidopsis PHD-finger protein EDM2 has multiple roles in balancing NLR immune receptor gene expressionLai, Yan; Lu, Xueqing Maggie; Daron, Josquin; Pan, Songqin; Wang, Jianqiang; Wang, Wei; Tsuchiya, Tokuji; Holub, Eric; McDowell, John M.; Slotkin, R. Keith; Le Roch, Karine G.; Eulgem, Thomas (PLoS, 2020-09-01)Plant NLR-type receptors serve as sensitive triggers of host immunity. Their expression has to be well-balanced, due to their interference with various cellular processes and dose-dependency of their defense-inducing activity. A genetic “arms race” with fast-evolving pathogenic microbes requires plants to constantly innovate their NLR repertoires. We previously showed that insertion of the COPIA-R7 retrotransposon into RPP7 co-opted the epigenetic transposon silencing signal H3K9me2 to a new function promoting expression of this Arabidopsis thaliana NLR gene. Recruitment of the histone binding protein EDM2 to COPIA-R7-associated H3K9me2 is required for optimal expression of RPP7. By profiling of genome-wide effects of EDM2, we now uncovered additional examples illustrating effects of transposons on NLR gene expression, strongly suggesting that these mobile elements can play critical roles in the rapid evolution of plant NLR genes by providing the “raw material” for gene expression mechanisms. We further found EDM2 to have a global role in NLR expression control. Besides serving as a positive regulator of RPP7 and a small number of other NLR genes, EDM2 acts as a suppressor of a multitude of additional NLR genes. We speculate that the dual functionality of EDM2 in NLR expression control arose from the need to compensate for fitness penalties caused by high expression of some NLR genes by suppression of others. Moreover, we are providing new insights into functional relationships of EDM2 with its interaction partner, the RNA binding protein EDM3/AIPP1, and its target gene IBM1, encoding an H3K9-demethylase.