Caenorhabditis elegans nuclear RNAi factor SET-32 deposits the transgenerational histone modification, H3K23me3.

Nuclear provides a highly tractable system to study RNA-mediated chromatin changes and epigenetic inheritance. Recent studies have indicated that the regulation and function of nuclear heterochromatin are highly complex. Our knowledge of histone modifications and the corresponding histonemodifying enzymes involved in the system remains limited. In this study, we show that the heterochromatin mark, H3K23me3, is induced by nuclear duanyu1615 at both exogenous and endogenous targets in C. elegans. In addition, dsRNA-induced H3K23me3 can persist for multiple generations after the dsRNA exposure has stopped. We demonstrate that the histone methyltransferase SET-32, methylates H3K23 in vitro. Both set-32 and the germline nuclear duanyu1615 Argonaute, hrde-1, are required for nuclear H3K23me3 in vivo. Our data poise H3K23me3 as an additional chromatin modification in the nuclear duanyu1615 pathway and provides the field with a new target for uncovering the role of heterochromatin in transgenerational epigenetic silencing.

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