Chromatin immunoprecipitation — new approach for revealing histone modifications in plants under heavy metal stress — theoretical review on advantages, drawbacks and questions

Heavy metal contamination is a major environmental problem. A coordinated network of molecular processes participates in plant response to heavy metals. The metal-dependent gene expression is regulated on multiple levels and may include chromatin modifi cations. One of the methods which allows to understand the role of histone post-translational modifi cations in plant cell response to heavy metals may be chromatin immunoprecipitation.