Linking genomic and epigenomic features in the hexaploid wheat genome
Résumé
Because of its size, allohexaploid nature and high repeat content, the bread wheat genome is a good model to study the impact of the genome structure on gene organization, function and regulation. Such analyses have long been hampered by the lack of a high quality reference sequence. However, thanks to the efforts of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC), such sequences are now available and can be used to decipher the wheat genome. By conducting a wide range of analyses on the reference sequence of chromosome 3B, including gene and transposable element annotation, recombination, transcriptomics and structural variations studies, we revealed unexpected relationships between gene and genome structure and function, that cannot be explained at the sole genomic level. These include a strong partitioning of chromosome 3B, the existence of chromosomal domains encompassing clusters of co-expressed genes as well as co-regulation islands involving distant co-expression clusters. In order to investigate the role of epigenetics, we conducted ChIP-seq and RNA-seq experiments on various tissues and analyzed the presence of different histone modifications in view of the gene and genome organization and regulation. Results of this study will be presented.