title: Novel in vivo screening design for the rapid and cost-effective identification of transcriptional regulators.
abstract: Genetic screens are a common tool to identify new modulators in a defined context, e.g. hormonal response or environmental stress. However, most screens are either in vitro or laborious and time-and-space inefficient. Here we present a novel in planta screening approach that shortens the time from the actual screening process to the identification of a new modulator and simultaneously reduces space requirements and costs. The basic features of this screening approach are the creation of luciferase reporter plants which enable a non-invasive readout in a streamlined multiplate reader process, the transformation of those plants with an inducible, Gateway™-compatible expression vector, and a screening setup, in which whole plants at the seedling stage are screened in 96-multiwell plates in the first transformed generation without the use of an expensive charge-coupled device (CCD) camera system. The screening itself and the verification of candidates can be done in as little as 2-3 weeks. The screen enables the analysis of reporter gene activity upon different treatments. Primary positive plants can immediately be selected and grown further. In this study a fast, simple, cost- and space-efficient in planta screening system to detect novel mediators of a given transcriptional response was developed and successfully tested using the cytokinin signal transduction as a test case.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biology/Applied Genetics, Dahlem Centre of Plant Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, 14195, Germany.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hellmann
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biology/Applied Genetics, Dahlem Centre of Plant Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, 14195, Germany.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Swinka
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biology/Applied Genetics, Dahlem Centre of Plant Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, 14195, Germany.|Biology Department, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY, 11530-070, US.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8782-1260
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Heyl
mesh_terms: D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D036226:Seedlings / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D014158:Transcription, Genetic / Q000235:genetics