Genome-Wide Expression Analysis of Arabidopsis CRES-T Mutants Related

A number of transcription factors have been shown to play important roles for the regulation of growth and development in plants. Thus, identification of biological function of each transcription factor is an important subject for the elucidation of transcriptional network and signaling cascade of that regulate plant growth and development including responses to phyohormone, biotic and abiotic stresses and metabolite biosynthesis. In addition, a transcription factor is a useful tool for the manipulation of plant traits because they regulate a set of genes that are involved in the regulation of a phenotype. However, plant genes are frequently duplicated and this structural and functional redundancy often interferes with efforts to identify the functions of these factors. To overcome these difficulties, we developed a novel gene silencing system, called Chimeric REpressor Gene-Silencing Technology (CRES-T), in which a transcription factor that is converted into strong repressor by fusion with EAR-motif repression domain (SRDX) suppresses the expression of target genes dominantly over the activation activity of endogenous and functionally redundant transcription factors, resulted in the induction of phenotype similar to loss-of-function of the alleles of the gene for transcription factor. Using this CRES-T system, we are comprehensively analyzing function of transcription factors encoded in Arabidopsis genome. We found that the chimeric repressor is a useful tool for the manipulation of various plant traits and produced horticultural plants with different shape of flowers. In addition, we isolated a number of CRES-T lines that exhibit tolerance to various abiotic stresses and nutrient deficiency. We present that the CRES-T system is not only useful for functional analysis of redundant transcription factors in plants but also is a powerful tool for the manipulation of plant traits.