Genome-wide mapping of DNase I hypersensitive sites reveals chromatin accessibility changes in Arabidopsis euchromatin and heterochromatin regions under extended darkness

Light, as the energy source in photosynthesis, is essential for plant growth and development. Extended darkness causes dramatic gene expression changes. In this study, we applied DNase-seq (DNase I hypersensitive site sequencing) to study changes of chromatin accessibility in euchromatic and heterochromatic regions under extended darkness in Arabidopsis. We generated 27 Gb DNase-seq and 67.6 Gb RNA-seq data to investigate chromatin accessibility changes and global gene expression under extended darkness and control condition in Arabidopsis. We found that ~40% DHSs (DNaseI hypersensitive sites) were diminished under darkness. In non-TE regions, the majority of DHS-changed genes were DHS-diminished under darkness. A total of 519 down-regulated genes were associated with diminished DHSs under darkness, mainly involved in photosynthesis process and retrograde signaling, and were regulated by chloroplast maintenance master regulators such as GLK1. In TE regions, approximately half of the DHS-changed TEs were DHS-increased under darkness and were primarily associated with the LTR/Gypsy retrotransposons in the heterochromatin flanking the centromeres. In contrast, DHS-diminished TEs under darkness were enriched in Copia, LINE, and MuDR dispersed across chromosomes. Together, our results indicated that extended darkness resulted in more increased chromatin compaction in euchromatin and decompaction in heterochromatin, thus further leading to gene expression changes in Arabidopsis.