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DRM1 and DRM2 expression regulation: potential role of splice variants in response to stress and environmental factors in Arabidopsis

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Abstract

The DRM1/ARP gene family is increasingly exhibiting associations with stress conditions at the transcript level. Traditionally correlated with dormancy, increases in transcript levels in response to various treatments have also been reported in various species. As alternative transcript splicing is common in stress conditions, the splice variants of AtDRM1 and AtDRM2 were assessed further in this study. A previously undescribed splice variant of AtDRM1 (AtDRM1.6) is introduced in this work. In silico analyses of predicted protein sequence of all splice variants showed that all variants retain the predicted intrinsically disordered nature. Transcriptional studies of AtDRM1 and AtDRM2 in response to a wide range of abiotic, physical and hormonal treatments showed that AtDRM1.6 is differentially regulated at the transcriptional level compared with other splice variants. Promoter analyses demonstrated AtDRM1 light regulation via the upstream promoter sequence.

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Abbreviations

RT qPCR:

Reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction

IDP:

Intrinsically disordered protein

DRM1 :

Dormancy-associated gene-1

ARP :

Auxin-repressed protein

WT:

Wild type

bp:

Base pairs

aa:

Amino acid

h:

Hour

min:

Minutes

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to Tim Homes for photographic assistance. Thank you to Rebecca Kirk and Kim Snowden for critical reading of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Marion Wood.

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Communicated by A. K. Tyagi.

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Rae, G.M., Uversky, V.N., David, K. et al. DRM1 and DRM2 expression regulation: potential role of splice variants in response to stress and environmental factors in Arabidopsis . Mol Genet Genomics 289, 317–332 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-013-0804-2

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