The Neurospora crassa White Collar-1 dependent blue light response requires acetylation of histone H3 lysine 14 by NGF-1

Blue light-induced transcription in Neurospora crassa is regulated by the White Collar-1 (WC-1) photoreceptor. We report that residue K14 of histone H3 associated with the light-inducible albino-3 (al-3) promoter becomes transiently acetylated after photoinduction. This acetylation depends on WC-1. The relevance of this chromatin modification was directly evaluated in vivo by construction of a Neurospora strain with a mutated histone H3 gene (hH3(K14Q)). This strain phenocopies a wc-1 blind mutant and shows a strong reduction of light-induced transcriptional activation of both al-3 and vivid (vvd), another light-inducible gene. We mutated Neurospora GCN Five (ngf-1), which encodes a homologue of the yeast HAT Gcn5p, to generate a strain impaired in H3 K14 acetylation and found that it was defective in photoinduction. Together, our findings reveal a direct link between histone modification and light signaling in Neurospora and contribute to the developing understanding of the molecular mechanisms operating in light-inducible gene activation.