Understanding how plants adapt organogenesis to their environment is a major challenge for both basic science and the agricultural sector. Epigenetic and chromatin dynamic regulations play a key role in this process. Great progress has been made in identifying genetic and epigenetic regulators, but their study using loss- or gain-of-function lines has generated mainly correlative conclusions between chromatin context and development. Furthermore, many of these mutants appear to be of limited use due to the severity and pleiotropic nature of their phenotypes. One of the challenges in the study of these processes is therefore to develop tools to precisely manipulate certain epigenetic marks, in order to understand the finer mechanistic aspects and to visualise their effects on plant architecture.

The production of Arabidopsis plants that accumulate a Histone H3 variant lacking Lysine 27 revealed effects on callus production, flowering and plant architecture. Indeed, this variant induces an early flowering, the formation of a very short stem, and a higher xylem production. The transcriptomic and metabolic data obtained made it possible to correlate these phenotypes with the deregulation of pathways essential for the proper development of plants. In particular, these data show a rewiring of metabolic fluxes in the phenylpropanoid biosynthetic pathway, with an effect on the specific metabolon of the lignin biosynthetic pathway.

These findings position H3 variants lacking Lysine 27 as candidate tools for enhancing regeneration, or accentuating certain developmental traits for the adaptation of crop plants to their environment.