Identification of stress-tolerance-related transcription-factor genes via mini-scale Full-length cDNA Over-eXpressor (FOX) gene hunting system.
Recently, we developed a novel system known as Full-length cDNA Over-eXpressor (FOX) gene hunting [T. Ichikawa, M. Nakazawa, M. Kawashima, H. Iizumi, H. Kuroda, Y. Kondou, Y. Tsuhara, K. Suzuki, A. Ishikawa, M. Seki, M. Fujita, R. Motohashi, N. Nagata, T. Takagi, K. Shinozaki, M. Matsui, The FOX hunting system: an alternative gain-of-function gene hunting technique, Plant J. 48 (2006) 974-985], which involves the random overexpression of a normalized Arabidopsis full-length cDNA library. While our system allows large-scale collection of full-length cDNAs for gene discovery, we sought to downsize it to analyze a small pool of full-length cDNAs. As a model system, we focused on stress-inducible transcription factors. The full-length cDNAs of 43 stress-inducible transcription factors were mixed to create a transgenic plant library. We screened for salt-stress-resistant lines in the T1 generation and identified a number of salt-tolerant lines that harbored the same transgene (F39). F39 encodes a bZIP-type transcription factor that is identical to AtbZIP60, which is believed to be involved in the endoplasmic reticulum stress response. Microarray analysis revealed that a number of stress-inducible genes were up-regulated in the F39-overexpressing lines, suggesting that AtbZIP60 is involved in stress signal transduction. Thus, our mini-scale FOX system may be used to screen for genes with valuable functions, such as transcription factors, from a small pool of genes that show similar expression profiles.
Fujita
Miki
M
Gene Discovery Research Group, RIKEN Plant Science Center, 3-1-1 Koyadai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0074, Japan.
Mizukado
Saho
S
Fujita
Yasunari
Y
Ichikawa
Takanari
T
Nakazawa
Miki
M
Seki
Motoaki
M
Matsui
Minami
M
Yamaguchi-Shinozaki
Kazuko
K
Shinozaki
Kazuo
K
D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism*; D004721:Endoplasmic Reticulum / Q000378:metabolism; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D015723:Gene Library; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism
D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; D018076:DNA, Complementary; D014157:Transcription Factors