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Plants display exquisite control over gene expression to elicit appropriate responses under normal and stress conditions. Alternative splicing (AS) of pre-mRNAs, a process that generates two or more transcripts from multi-exon genes, adds another layer of regulation to fine-tune condition-specific gene expression in animals and plants. However, exactly how plants control splice isoform ratios and the timing of this regulation in response to environmental signals remains elusive. In mammals, recent evidence indicate that epigenetic and epitranscriptome changes, such as DNA methylation, chromatin modifications and RNA methylation, regulate RNA polymerase II processivity, co-transcriptional splicing, and stability and translation efficiency of splice isoforms. In plants, the role of epigenetic modifications in regulating transcription rate and mRNA abundance under stress is beginning to emerge. However, the mechanisms by which epigenetic and epitranscriptomic modifications regulate AS and translation efficiency require further research. Dynamic changes in the chromatin landscape in response to stress may provide a scaffold around which gene expression, AS and translation are orchestrated. Finally, we discuss CRISPR/Cas-based strategies for engineering chromatin architecture to manipulate AS patterns (or splice isoforms levels) to obtain insight into the epigenetic regulation of AS., (© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.)

Alternative splicing (AS) coupled to nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) is a post-transcriptional mechanism for regulating gene expression. We have used a high-resolution AS RT-PCR panel to identify endogenous AS isoforms which increase in abundance when NMD is impaired in the Arabidopsis NMD factor mutants, upf1-5 and upf3-1. Of 270 AS genes (950 transcripts) on the panel, 102 transcripts from 97 genes (32%) were identified as NMD targets. Extrapolating from these data around 13% of intron-containing genes in the Arabidopsis genome are potentially regulated by AS/NMD. This cohort of naturally occurring NMD-sensitive AS transcripts also allowed the analysis of the signals for NMD in plants. We show the importance of AS in introns in 5' or 3'UTRs in modulating NMD-sensitivity of mRNA transcripts. In particular, we identified upstream open reading frames overlapping the main start codon as a new trigger for NMD in plants and determined that NMD is induced if 3'-UTRs were >350 nt. Unexpectedly, although many intron retention transcripts possess NMD features, they are not sensitive to NMD. Finally, we have shown that AS/NMD regulates the abundance of transcripts of many genes important for plant development and adaptation including transcription factors, RNA processing factors and stress response genes.