National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17(114), p. 4543-4548, 2017
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Significance Polyploidization of somatic cells is common in angiosperms. The characteristic and inherited developmental pattern of polyploidy in various organs and cell types suggests a role for endoreduplication in differentiation and specialized cell functioning. Rhizobium -infected nodule cells provide a unique opportunity to study specific developmental-stage changes in gene expression and in the epigenome during differentiation and at growing ploidy levels. We show that transcriptional reprogramming of hundreds of nodule-specific genes in successive waves correlates with the ploidy levels. Moreover, the dynamic changes observed in the epigenome suggest that chromatin accessibility together with histone tail modifications regulate the transcriptionally active or inert state of the genes.