Comparative Analyses of
Distributions and Functions of Z-DNA in Arabidopsis and Rice
ABSTRACT: Left-handed Z-DNA
is an energetically unfavorable DNA structure that could form mostly under
certain physiological conditions and was known to be involved in a number of
cellular activities such as transcription regulation. We have compared the
distributions and functions of Z-DNA in the genomes of Arabidopsis and rice,
and observed that Z-DNA occurs in rice at least 9 times more often than in
Arabidopsis; similar observations hold for other monocots and dicots. In
addition, Z-DNA is significantly enriched in the coding regions of Arabidopsis,
and in the high-GC-content regions of rice. Based on our analyses, we speculate
that Z-DNA may play a role in regulating the expression of transcription
factors, inhibitors, translation repressors, succinate dehydrogenases and
glutathione-disulfide reductases in Arabidopsis, and it may affect the
expression of vesicle and nucleosome genes and genes involved in alcohol
transporter activity, stem cell maintenance, meristem development and
reproductive structure development in rice.
BIO: Chan
Zhou is a Postdoctoral Associate in Bioinformatics, at Compuational Systems
Biology Lab, University of Georgia, GA. She received her PhD from Zhejiang
University, China, in 2009, co-supervised by Prof. Bailin Hao and Prof. Ying
Xu(CSBL@UGA). She is interested in comparative genomics studies and evolution
genomics, in particular, functional elements in plant genomics including Z-DNA,
plant studies related to biofuel, protein protein interaction, horizontal gene
transfer. She has reviewed for Plos One etc Internal Journals. She published
research papers since her undergraduate years.
