title: Control of seed dormancy in Arabidopsis by a cis-acting noncoding antisense transcript.
abstract: Seed dormancy is one of the most crucial process transitions in a plant's life cycle. Its timing is tightly controlled by the expression level of the Delay of Germination 1 gene (DOG1). DOG1 is the major quantitative trait locus for seed dormancy in Arabidopsis and has been shown to control dormancy in many other plant species. This is reflected by the evolutionary conservation of the functional short alternatively polyadenylated form of the DOG1 mRNA. Notably, the 3' region of DOG1, including the last exon that is not included in this transcript isoform, shows a high level of conservation at the DNA level, but the encoded polypeptide is poorly conserved. Here, we demonstrate that this region of DOG1 contains a promoter for the transcription of a noncoding antisense RNA, asDOG1, that is 5' capped, polyadenylated, and relatively stable. This promoter is autonomous and asDOG1 has an expression profile that is different from known DOG1 transcripts. Using several approaches we show that asDOG1 strongly suppresses DOG1 expression during seed maturation in cis, but is unable to do so in trans Therefore, the negative regulation of seed dormancy by asDOG1 in cis results in allele-specific suppression of DOG1 expression and promotes germination. Given the evolutionary conservation of the asDOG1 promoter, we propose that this cis-constrained noncoding RNA-mediated mechanism limiting the duration of seed dormancy functions across the Brassicaceae.
authors.affiliation: Department of Protein Biosynthesis, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Halina
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fedak
authors.affiliation: Department of Protein Biosynthesis, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Malgorzata
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Palusinska
authors.affiliation: Department of Protein Biosynthesis, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Katarzyna
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Krzyczmonik
authors.affiliation: Department of Protein Biosynthesis, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Lien
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Brzezniak
authors.affiliation: Department of Protein Biosynthesis, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Ruslan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yatusevich
authors.affiliation: Department of Protein Biosynthesis, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Zbigniew
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Pietras
authors.affiliation: Department of Protein Biosynthesis, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.|Department of Bioinformatics, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Szymon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kaczanowski
authors.affiliation: Department of Protein Biosynthesis, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland; sswiez@ibb.waw.pl.
authors.forename: Szymon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Swiezewski
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000502:physiology*; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins / Q000502:physiology*; D001483:Base Sequence; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D005091:Exons; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D057445:Plant Dormancy; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D016372:RNA, Antisense / Q000502:physiology*; D018749:RNA, Plant / Q000502:physiology; D022661:RNA, Untranslated / Q000502:physiology; D012639:Seeds / Q000502:physiology*; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
chemical_list: D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; C532384:DOG1 protein, Arabidopsis; D016372:RNA, Antisense; D018749:RNA, Plant; D022661:RNA, Untranslated
keywords: DOG1 gene; antisense transcript; cis-acting ncRNA; seed dormancy