A 4D Nucleome approach to identify enhancers controlling tomato heat stress response – 4D-Heat

Tomato is one of the most important vegetable crops for production and world trade. In the future the tomato demand is expected to increase by 60% by 2050, but climate change is an obstacle for yield increase. In this context scientists and plant breeders must prepare for climate change by identifying genomic sequences and notably gene regulatory elements (RE) responsible for stress-tolerance and mechanistically understand how they allow plants to overcome detrimental environments. To meet this challenge, in the 4D-HEAT project, we propose to decipher mechanisms driving the dynamics of enhancer promoter contacts in response to heat stress. This highly innovative and timely project integrates linear epigenome (1D), transcriptome data (2D) and chromatin architecture (3D) with a temporal dimension (4D) into a comprehensive approach to understand the chromatin-based regulation of enhancer promoter contact and how this can impact gene regulation in crops.