MH-seq for Functional Characterization of Open Chromatin in Plants

In plants, MNase hypersensitive sites (MHSs) function as promoters and enhancers for active transcription of local or distal genes through recruiting transcriptional machinery and coordinating with active marks. In addition, MHSs mark expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) and recombination hotspots. For example, an MHS may act as a poised enhancer, which is flanked by repressive or bivalent histone marks and inaccessible to transcriptional machinery or an MHS may act as a silencer for binding with repressors; both cases reflect conditional suppression of nearby or related genes.