TY - JOUR TI - Long non-coding RNA produced by RNA polymerase V determines boundaries of heterochromatin AU - Böhmdorfer, Gudrun AU - Sethuraman, Shriya AU - Rowley, M Jordan AU - Krzyszton, Michal AU - Rothi, M Hafiz AU - Bouzit, Lilia AU - Wierzbicki, Andrzej T A2 - Qi, Yijun VL - 5 PY - 2016 DA - 2016/10/25 SP - e19092 C1 - eLife 2016;5:e19092 DO - 10.7554/eLife.19092 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.19092 AB - RNA-mediated transcriptional gene silencing is a conserved process where small RNAs target transposons and other sequences for repression by establishing chromatin modifications. A central element of this process are long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA), which in Arabidopsis thaliana are produced by a specialized RNA polymerase known as Pol V. Here we show that non-coding transcription by Pol V is controlled by preexisting chromatin modifications located within the transcribed regions. Most Pol V transcripts are associated with AGO4 but are not sliced by AGO4. Pol V-dependent DNA methylation is established on both strands of DNA and is tightly restricted to Pol V-transcribed regions. This indicates that chromatin modifications are established in close proximity to Pol V. Finally, Pol V transcription is preferentially enriched on edges of silenced transposable elements, where Pol V transcribes into TEs. We propose that Pol V may play an important role in the determination of heterochromatin boundaries. KW - lncRNA KW - RdDM KW - transposons JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -