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Inhibition of RNA polymerase II allows controlled mobilisation of retrotransposons for plant breeding

Overview of attention for article published in Genome Biology, July 2017
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  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (94th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (85th percentile)

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2 blogs
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64 X users
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1 patent

Citations

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148 Mendeley
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Title
Inhibition of RNA polymerase II allows controlled mobilisation of retrotransposons for plant breeding
Published in
Genome Biology, July 2017
DOI 10.1186/s13059-017-1265-4
Pubmed ID
Authors

Michael Thieme, Sophie Lanciano, Sandrine Balzergue, Nicolas Daccord, Marie Mirouze, Etienne Bucher

Abstract

Retrotransposons play a central role in plant evolution and could be a powerful endogenous source of genetic and epigenetic variability for crop breeding. To ensure genome integrity several silencing mechanisms have evolved to repress retrotransposon mobility. Even though retrotransposons fully depend on transcriptional activity of the host RNA polymerase II (Pol II) for their mobility, it was so far unclear whether Pol II is directly involved in repressing their activity. Here we show that plants defective in Pol II activity lose DNA methylation at repeat sequences and produce more extrachromosomal retrotransposon DNA upon stress in Arabidopsis and rice. We demonstrate that combined inhibition of both DNA methylation and Pol II activity leads to a strong stress-dependent mobilization of the heat responsive ONSEN retrotransposon in Arabidopsis seedlings. The progenies of these treated plants contain up to 75 new ONSEN insertions in their genome which are stably inherited over three generations of selfing. Repeated application of heat stress in progeny plants containing increased numbers of ONSEN copies does not result in increased activation of this transposon compared to control lines. Progenies with additional ONSEN copies show a broad panel of environment-dependent phenotypic diversity. We demonstrate that Pol II acts at the root of transposon silencing. This is important because it suggests that Pol II can regulate the speed of plant evolution by fine-tuning the amplitude of transposon mobility. Our findings show that it is now possible to study induced transposon bursts in plants and unlock their use to induce epigenetic and genetic diversity for crop breeding.

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X Demographics

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 148 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 148 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 34 23%
Student > Ph. D. Student 30 20%
Student > Master 15 10%
Other 8 5%
Student > Bachelor 7 5%
Other 25 17%
Unknown 29 20%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 68 46%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 40 27%
Computer Science 4 3%
Nursing and Health Professions 1 <1%
Arts and Humanities 1 <1%
Other 2 1%
Unknown 32 22%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 52. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 03 August 2022.
All research outputs
#817,574
of 25,382,440 outputs
Outputs from Genome Biology
#542
of 4,468 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#16,746
of 325,442 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Genome Biology
#9
of 60 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,382,440 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 96th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,468 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 27.6. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 325,442 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 60 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.