Cotton Study Points to Chromatin Accessibility Convergence

In PNAS, researchers at Nantong University in China, Texas Tech University, and elsewhere explore the chromatin organization consequences of allopolyploidization in the domesticated cotton plants Gossypium hirsutum and G. barbadense. With DNase I hypersensitivity site (DHS) sequencing on G. hirsutum, G. barbadense, and the genome progenitor species G. arboreum and G. raimondii, the team profiled chromatin accessibility in the subgenomes contributing to domesticated allotetraploid cotton and identified convergent chromatin accessibility and gene regulatory features in the polyploid cotton plants that resembled the convergence found in subsequent analyses of wild allotetraploid Gossypium species. "Our results demonstrate a convergent change of DHS landscape during cotton polyploidization," the authors write. "We propose the existence of coordinated interplay among histone modification, [transposable elements], and specific transcription factor (TF) families underlying the observed regulome changes."