Salt stress usually causes crop growth inhibition and yield decrease. Epigenetic regulation is involved in plant responses to environmental stimuli. The epigenetic regulation of the cell wall related genes associated with the salt-induced cellular response is still little known. This study aimed to analyze cell morphological alterations in maize roots as a consequence of excess salinity in relation to the transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of the cell wall related protein genes.

The histone modification level has been shown to be related with gene activation and repression in stress-responsive process, but there is little information on the relationship between histone modification and cell cycle gene expression responsive to environmental cues. In this study, the function of histone modifications in mediating the transcriptional regulation of cell cycle genes under various types of stress was investigated in maize (Zea mays L.). Abiotic stresses all inhibit the growth of maize seedlings, and induce total acetylation level increase compared with the control group in maize roots. The positive and negative regulation of the expression of some cell cycle genes leads to perturbation of cell cycle progression in response to abiotic stresses. Chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis reveals that dynamic histone acetylation change in the promoter region of cell cycle genes is involved in the control of gene expression in response to external stress and different cell cycle genes have their own characteristic patterns for histone acetylation. The data also showed that the combinations of hyperacetylation and hypoacetylation states of specific lysine sites on the H3 and H4 tails on the promoter regions of cell cycle genes regulate specific cell cycle gene expression under abiotic stress conditions, thus resulting in prolonged cell cycle duration and an inhibitory effect on growth and development in maize seedlings.

Knobs are cytologically observable major interstitial heterochromatin present on maize nuclei, which consist of highly tandem‐repetitive elements that are always silenced. Here we investigated the genome‐wide change of H3K9ac, an active chromatin mark, during cold stress using chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP‐Seq) and identified differential cold‐induced H3K9ac enrichment at repetitive sequences in maize. More detailed analysis of two knob‐associated tandem‐repetitive sequences, 180‐bp and TR‐1, demonstrated that cold activated their transcription and this cold‐induced transcriptional activation of repetitive sequences is selective, transient, and associated with an increase in H3K9ac and a reduction in DNA methylation and H3K9me2. Furthermore, knob sequence expression is accompanied by localized chromatin remodelling and silencing is recovered upon prolonged treatment. In addition, no evidence of copy number change and rearrangement of these repetitive elements are found in plants subjected to cold stress. These results suggest that cold‐mediated unsilencing of heterochromatic tandem‐repeated sequences, accompanied with epigenetic regulation, might play an important role in the adaptation of plants to cold stimuli.

Histone modification plays a crucial role in regulation of chromatin architecture and function, responding to adverse external stimuli. However, little is known about a possible relationship between epigenetic modification and programmed cell death (PCD) in response to environmental stress. Here, we found that heat stress induced PCD in maize seedling leaves which was characterized by chromatin DNA laddering and DNA strand breaks detected by a terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) test. The activities of the reactive oxygen species (ROS)-related enzymes superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD) and catalase (CAT) were progressively increased over time in the heat-treated seedlings. However, the concentration of H₂O₂ remained at relatively lower levels, while the concentration of superoxide anion ($O2−$) was increased, accompanied by the occurrence of higher ion leakage rates after heat treatment. The total acetylation levels of histones H3K9, H4K5 and H3 were significantly increased, whereas the di-methylation level of histone H3K4 was unchanged and the di-methylation level of histone H3K9 was decreased in the seedling leaves exposed to heat stress compared with the control seedlings, accompanied by increased nucleolus size indicative of chromatin decondensation. Furthermore, treatment of seedlings with trichostatin A (TSA), which always results in genomic histone hyperacetylation, caused an increase in the $O2−$ level within the cells. The results suggested that heat stress persistently induced $O2−$, leading to PCD in association with histone modification changes in the maize leaves.