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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 #417525
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: Characterization of Transcription Factor Family’s Functional Role in Arabidopsis thaliana Primary Root Growth

Author
item DOOLING, KATE - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item WANG, KAI - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item ZHANG, LIFANG - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item KUMAR, VIVEK - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item FAHEY, AUDREY - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item HU, FANGLE - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item CHOUGULE, KAPEEL - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
item Ware, Doreen

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/20/2024
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Agricultural yield is a multifaceted trait encompassing various traits, including root formation and growth, as well as plant responses to abiotic and biotic stress factors. Such processes generally involve transcription factor-mediated regulation of a wide array of genes. In this preliminary study, 167 Arabidopsis thaliana germplasms with mutated genes in various transcription factor (TF) families were screened to determine their role in primary root growth. It was hypothesized that loss of function mutant genes expressed in the roots might exhibit distinct root phenotypes. Amplified seeds from each of the 167 germplasms obtained from the Salk Institute’s T-DNA Insertional Mutant Collection were plated on standard media and grown for 7 days. Plates were then scanned using a high-resolution flatbed scanner and roots were traced to measure length based on a semi-automated approach using SmartRoot, a tool in ImageJ. All germplasms were also screened for phenotypic consistency based on primary root length and assumed homozygosity of given TF alleles. Out of all phenotypically consistent germplasms, 5 mutated genes produced short root phenotypes and 14 produced long root phenotypes. The 19 genes that produced extreme root length phenotypes may potentially be valuable in crop species. To investigate this, we identified which of the 19 genes in Arabidopsis had orthologs present in Sorghum. These orthologs were then reviewed in SorghumBase and curated to identify conservation among predicted protein sequence models. The presence of conservation between predicted protein models can potentially contribute to future investigation of the significance of TF families in important agricultural crops. Funding: USDA-CRIS award number 8062-21000-044-000D.