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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Ithaca, New York » Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture & Health » Plant, Soil and Nutrition Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #412080
Research Project: Championing Improvement of Sorghum and Other Agriculturally Important Species through Data Stewardship and Functional Dissection of Complex Traits

Location: Plant, Soil and Nutrition Research

Title: Binding Behaviors of Diverse GRAS Family Transcription Factors in Monocots

Author
item FAHEY, AUDREY - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item KUMARI, SUNITA - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item REGULSKI, MICHAEL - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item Ware, Doreen
item Gladman, Nicholas

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/22/2024
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Transcription factors (TFs) regulate gene expression which can modify a variety of plant phenotypes. The GRAS family is a plant specific TF family, evolved in plants before vascularization and is involved with many areas of plant development and environmental response in shoot and root architecture. While more is known about GRAS TFs in Arabidopsis, their behavior and function in Sorghum bicolor are mostly uncharacterized. To this end, we selected three GRAS TFs, Short root (SHR), Scarecrow-like3 (SCL3), and Scarecrow-like23 (SCL23), to be characterized using DNA affinity purification and sequencing (DAP-seq). We took bacterially expressed sorghum SHR, SCL3, and SCL23 and exposed each TF to genomic DNA (gDNA) fragments of Sorghum bicolor, Zea mays, and Oryza sativa. The gDNA fragments that bound to each TF were sequenced and the resulting data was processed to determine the binding profiles of each TF against the gDNA of each monocot. This has generated the first ever DAP-seq profile of each of these TFs in sorghum and for cross-species comparison in monocots. Genes associated with GRAS TF peaks in their promoters had functions related to amino acid processing as well as stress response and potential root architecture development. Novel DNA motifs determined from enrichment analysis of the three GRAS TF peaks indicated a set of putative DNA-recognition motifs for each TF to act upon; these motifs are present in a frequency that is seemingly unique to this class of TFs and strongly suggests a particular type of chromatin architecture in promoter regions for proper gene regulation via GRAS family proteins. This project was funded by the USDA-ARS award number 8062-21000-044-000D.