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Date

2013-03-19

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

PLos One
Creative Commons
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution 3.0 United States

In the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana the heterotrimeric transcription factor NUCLEAR FACTOR Y (NF-Y) has been shown to play multiple roles in facilitating plant growth and development. Although NF-Y itself represents a multi-protein transcriptional complex, recent studies have shown important interactions with other transcription factors, especially those in the bZIP family. Here we add to the growing evidence that NF-Y and bZIP form common complexes to affect many processes. We carried out transcriptional profiling on nf-yc mutants and through subsequent analyses found an enrichment of bZIP binding sites in the promoter elements of misregulated genes. Using NF-Y as bait, yeast two hybrid assays yielded interactions with bZIP proteins that are known to control ABA signaling. Accordingly, we find that plants mutant for several NF-Y subunits show characteristic phenotypes associated with the disruption of ABA signaling. While previous reports have shown additive roles for NF-YC family members in photoperiodic flowering, we found that they can have opposing roles in ABA signaling. Collectively, these results demonstrated the importance and complexity of NF-Y in the integration of environmental and hormone signals.

Description

The authors thank Bing Zhang and Taylor Fore for use of the Zeiss AxioImager microscope and technical assistance. We additionally thank Krishna Suthar and Ashley Robbins for technical support in the lab.
Conceived and designed the experiments: BFH RWK. Performed the experiments: RWK CLS KKG JRR NS. Analyzed the data: RWK BFH. Wrote the paper: RWK BFH.

Keywords

PLOS, Public Library of Science, Open Access, Open-Access, Science, Medicine, Biology, Research, Peer-review, Inclusive, Interdisciplinary, Ante-disciplinary, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering

Citation

Kumimoto RW, Siriwardana CL, Gayler KK, Risinger JR, Siefers N, et al. (2013) NUCLEAR FACTOR Y Transcription Factors Have Both Opposing and Additive Roles in ABA-Mediated Seed Germination. PLoS ONE 8(3): e59481. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059481

Related file

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0059481

Notes

Sponsorship