Universität zu Köln 

Prof. Dr. Klaus Harter 

Institut für Botanik, Universität zu Köln
since 01/2005: Universität Tübingen
website
The project became part of the SFB 446, project A23.

Running time: 07/2003 – 12/2004

Abstract

Transcription factors play crucial roles in almost all biological processes and are classified by their DNA-binding domain. The basic region/leucine zipper (bZIP) transcription factors have a basic region that binds DNA and a leucine zipper for dimerisation. Studies of a few plant bZIP transcription factors revealed that they participate in the regulation of diverse biological processes. Despite this recent progress, there is only minor knowledge about the molecular and biochemical mechanisms of posttranslational regulation of plant bZIP factors.

With the proposed project we would like to address the mechanism of posttranslational modification (phosphorylation) of four bZIP transcription factors from Arabidopsis thaliana [namely Arabidopsis thaliana Common Plant Regulatory Factor 2-1 (AtCPRF2-1), AtCPRF2-2, AtCPRF2-3, AtCPRF2-4]. These factors form a small but distinct subfamily within the 75 members of Arabidopsis bZIP proteins. Preliminary analyses revealed that there is only minor regulation of these four factors on transcriptional level but posttranslational modification by phosphorylation. We, therefore, expect a complex regulation of AtCPRF2s by phosphorylation.

Publications resulting from the project:

Berendzen, K.W., Stüber, K., Harter, K., and Wanke, D. (2006). Cis-motifs upstream of the transcription and translation initiation sites are effectively revealed by their positional disequilibrium in eukaryote genomes using frequency distribution curves. BMC Bioinformatics 7, 522.

Kaminaka, H., Näke, C., Epple, P., Dittgen, J., Schütze, K., Chaban, C., Holt, B.F., Merkle, T., Schäfer, E., Harter, K., and Dangl, J.L. (2006). Pathogen-induced cell death control via antagonistic functions of a bZIP transcription factor and LSD1 in Arabidopsis thaliana. EMBO J. 25, 4400-4411.

Weltmeier, F., Ehlert, A., Mayer, C.S., Dietrich, K., Wang, X., Schütze, K., Alonso, R., Harter, K., Vincente-Carbajosa, J., and Dröge-Laser, W. (2006). Combinatorial control of proline dehydrogenase transcription by specific heterodimerisation of bZIP transcription factors. EMBO J. 25, 3133-3143.

Walter, M., Chaban, C., Schütze, K., Batistic, O., Weckermann, K., Näke, N., Blazevic, D., Grefen, C., Schumacher, K., Oecking, C., Harter, K., and Kudla, J. (2004). Visualisation of protein-protein interactions in living plant cells using bimolecular fluorescence complementation. Plant J. 40, 428-438.