title: ABFs, a family of ABA-responsive element binding factors.
abstract: Abscisic acid (ABA) plays an important role in environmental stress responses of higher plants during vegetative growth. One of the ABA-mediated responses is the induced expression of a large number of genes, which is mediated by cis-regulatory elements known as abscisic acid-responsive elements (ABREs). Although a number of ABRE binding transcription factors have been known, they are not specifically from vegetative tissues under induced conditions. Considering the tissue specificity of ABA signaling pathways, factors mediating ABA-dependent stress responses during vegetative growth phase may thus have been unidentified so far. Here, we report a family of ABRE binding factors isolated from young Arabidopsis plants under stress conditions. The factors, isolated by a yeast one-hybrid system using a prototypical ABRE and named as ABFs (ABRE binding factors) belong to a distinct subfamily of bZIP proteins. Binding site selection assay performed with one ABF showed that its preferred binding site is the strong ABRE, CACGTGGC. ABFs can transactivate an ABRE-containing reporter gene in yeast. Expression of ABFs is induced by ABA and various stress treatments, whereas their induction patterns are different from one another. Thus, a new family of ABRE binding factors indeed exists that have the potential to activate a large number of ABA/stress-responsive genes in Arabidopsis.
authors.affiliation: Kumho Life and Environmental Science Laboratory, Kwangju 500-712, South Korea.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ha
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.forename: S Y
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D000040:Abscisic Acid / Q000378:metabolism*; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000378:metabolism; D001483:Base Sequence; D001665:Binding Sites; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D015723:Gene Library; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D011485:Protein Binding; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D020218:Response Elements; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D013379:Substrate Specificity; D013997:Time Factors; D015533:Transcriptional Activation; D020798:Two-Hybrid System Techniques
chemical_list: D010940:Plant Proteins; D011994:Recombinant Proteins; D000040:Abscisic Acid