Chromatin Immunoprecipitation-Sequencing (ChIP-Seq) to Understand Genome-Wide Hierarchy of H4K12ac and H3K9me2 acquisition in Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and mung bean (Vigna mungo L.)

Epigenetic modulation of gene expression is critical for cell differentiation, and thus extremely important for normal growth and development of higher eukaryotes. Epigenetic control is a very complicated interplay between various molecular mechanisms like DNA methylation and histone modifications. Histones bind DNA and thus modify the structure of the chromatin thus making the DNA either accessible or inaccessible to normal cellular processes such as replication and expression. The most widely established procedure to investigate histone modifications is Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) which now combined with next generation sequencing is termed as ChIP-seq. Since histone modifications have been studied in a few model plants, and no such work has been documented in common bean, we sought to develop a ChIP methodology for common bean, and several ChIP-seq libraries from four common bean genotypes (Sierra, Bat93, Jalo, G19833) and mung bean were constructed. Our goal is to identify differences in the locations of DNA binding as a result of two histone modifications-H4K12_ac (acetylation) and H3K9_me2 (dimethylation). This will serve as the first reference histone-DNA interaction map for common bean and should help in a better understanding of the recently sequenced genomes of G19833.