Deciphering the regulatory code of histone modifications in plants

Eukaryotic genomes are compacted into histone-wrapped chromatin, which provides an opportunity to fine-tune the gene expression by dynamically impeding or reinforcing the accessibility of the genome to the transcription factors(TFs) and cofactors. The modification of histones is one of the various mechanisms to regulate DNA exposure by altering the physical properties of nucleosomes(Klemm et al., 2019). In plants, histone modifications play a critical role in establishing the cell identity and responding to environmental cues,including responses to temperature, alterations of flowering time(Liu et al., 2010; He et al., 2021).