Cross activity of orthologous WRKY transcription factors in wheat and Arabidopsis
Author(s)
Date Issued
2011
Type
Article
Abstract
WRKY proteins are transcription factors involved in many plant processes including plant responses to pathogens.
Here, the cross activity of TaWRKY78 from the monocot wheat and AtWRKY20 from the dicot Arabidopsis on the
cognate promoters of the orthologous PR4-type genes wPR4e and AtHEL of wheat and Arabidopsis, respectively,
was investigated. In vitro analysis showed the ability of TaWRKY78 to bind a –17/+80 region of the wPR4e promoter,
containing one cis-acting W-box. Moreover, transient expression analysis performed on both TaWRKY78 and
AtWRKY20 showed their ability to recognize the cognate cis-acting elements present in the wPR4e and AtHEL
promoters, respectively. Finally, this paper provides evidence that both transcription factors are able to cross-
regulate the orthologous PR4 genes with an efficiency slightly lower than that exerted on the cognate promoters.
The observation that orthologous genes are subjected to similar transcriptional control by orthologous transcription
factors demonstrates that the terminal stages of signal transduction pathways leading to defence are conserved and
suggests a fundamental role of PR4 genes in plant defence. Moreover, these results corroborate the hypothesis that
gene orthology imply similar gene function and that diversification between monocot and dicot has most likely
occurred after the specialization of WRKY function.
Additional information
L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore: www.oxfordjournals.org
Citation
Proietti, S. et al. 2011. Cross activity of orthologous WRKY transcription factors in wheat and Arabidopsis. "Journal of Experimental Botany" 62(6): 1975-1990.
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Sponsor(s)
This research was supported by the Ministero dell’Istruzione, Universita` e Ricerca Scientifica (MIUR), project MIUR-FIRB (RBNE01KZE7) of CNR-IGV, Istituto di Genetica Vegetale, Portici, Italy