Recently, the research team led by Professor Xu Qiutao from the GXU School of Agriculture has made new progresses in the study of novel histone modifications in plants. Their groundbreaking research has produced the first genome-wide map of a novel acylation modification at a specific histone site in rice—2-hydroxyisobutyrylation (H4K8hib). This study reveals that H4K8hib acts as an active chromatin mark in rice, which enhances immune responses by promoting gene expression.

The findings, titled “Histone H4K8hib modification promotes gene expression and regulates rice immunity”, were published in the internationally prestigious journal Molecular Plant. Guangxi University is the first completion unit of this paper. Professor Xu Qiutao from Guangxi University, as well as Ma Xuan, a PhD student from the School of Agriculture at Ningxia University are the co-first authors. Additionally, Professor Chen Xiaoyang from the School of Plant Protection at Anhui Agriculture University and Xu Qiutao are the co-corresponding authors.

It is reported that professor Xu Qiutao and his team have recently focused on the cutting-edge research on functional mechanisms of epigenetic regulation to explore the interplay between energy metabolism and epigenetic modifications in plant biology. Their research has yielded a series of significant original findings, published in prestigious domestic and international journals, including Nature Communications, Cell Reports, Molecular Plant, Nucleic Acids Research, Genome Biology, Plant Biotechnology Journal, Plant Physiology, and Plant Communications.