Abstract
To better understand the role of chromatin in gene regulation, it is key to elucidate how chromatin architecture affects the function of transcription factors. In other words, to define how chromatin is involved in shaping regulatory networks. Usually, information about chromatin marks are added to already existing regulatory networks inferred using transcriptomics obtained in different environmental conditions or mutants. However, it has not been defined yet how the mutation for a given chromatin factor is directly influencing a regulatory network. This is what we are studying, by using the variability in expression that exists between genetically identical individual plants growing in the same environmental conditions. As a proof of concept, we are analysing the impact of the arp6-1 mutant on regulatory networks. This mutant is characterised by a global loss of H2A.Z in the chromatin. We performed RNA-seq on several individual seedlings in the WT and arp6-1 mutant and used the inter-individual variability in expression to infer a regulatory network for each genotype. By comparing these two regulatory networks we are now in a position to identify the pathways and targets of transcription factors most affected by the arp6-1 mutation. We will present this new type of analysis as well as the results we obtained for the arp6-1 mutant.