PhD Student University of California, Davis, California
Body of Abstract: Introns are non-coding regions of DNA that are transcribed into RNA but are subsequently spliced out before being translated into protein. Despite being a fundamental feature of eukaryotic genomes, the role of introns in gene expression, chromatin biology, and genome evolution remain poorly understood. To address these gaps in our understanding, we profiled pairs of gene duplicates that differ in intron content in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, and tested for the effect of intron loss and gain on gene expression, histone modifications and DNA repair. We found that gene duplicates with more introns have divergent chromatin states with consequences for gene regulation and repair. Duplicates with more introns show higher levels of H3K36me3, H3K4me1, constitutive expression across tissues, and binding by the DNA repair protein PDS5C. Overall, this study sheds light on the important role of introns in gene expression and chromatin biology, and highlights the need for further investigation into the evolutionary mechanisms and functional significance of non-coding genomic features. Our findings have implications for our understanding of genome evolution, gene regulation, and the development of new biotechnological applications that rely on gene expression and genome editing.