Optimization of ATAC-seq in wheat seedling roots using INTACT-isolated nuclei

Background: The genetic information contained in the genome of an organism is organized in genes and regulatory elements that control gene expression. The genomes of multiple plants species have already been sequenced and the gene repertory have been annotated, however, cis-regulatory elements remain less characterized, limiting our understanding of genome functionality. These elements act as open platforms for recruiting both positive- and negative-acting transcription factors, and as such, chromatin accessibility is an important signature for their identification.

Results: In this work we developed a transgenic INTACT [isolation of nuclei tagged in specific cell types] system in tetraploid wheat for nuclei purifications. Then, we combined the INTACT system together with the assay for transposase-accessible chromatin with sequencing [ATAC-seq] to identify open chromatin regions in wheat root tip samples. Our ATAC-seq results showed a large enrichment of open chromatin regions in intergenic and promoter regions, which is expected for regulatory elements and that is similar to ATAC-seq results obtained in other plant species. In addition, root ATAC-seq peaks showed a significant overlap with a previously published ATAC-seq data from wheat leaf protoplast, indicating a high reproducibility between the two experiments and a large overlap between open chromatin regions in root and leaf tissues. Importantly, we observed overlap between ATAC-seq peaks and cis-regulatory elements that have been functionally validated in wheat, and a good correlation between normalized accessibility and gene expression levels.

Conclusions: We have developed and validated an INTACT system in tetraploid wheat that allows rapid and high-quality nuclei purification from root tips. Those nuclei were successfully used to performed ATAC-seq experiments that revealed open chromatin regions in the wheat genome that will be useful to identify cis-regulatory elements. The INTACT system presented here will facilitate the development of ATAC-seq datasets in other tissues, growth stages, and under different growing conditions to generate a more complete landscape of the accessible DNA regions in the wheat genome.