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Plant homeodomain-leucine zipper I transcription factors exhibit different functional AHA motifs that selectively interact with TBP or/and TFIIB

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Abstract

Key message

Different members of the HD-Zip I family of transcription factors exhibit differential AHA-like activation motifs, able to interact with proteins of the basal transcriptional machinery.

Abstract

Homeodomain-leucine zipper proteins are transcription factors unique to plants, classified in four subfamilies. Subfamily I members have been mainly associated to abiotic stress responses. Several ones have been characterized using knockout or overexpressors plants, indicating that they take part in different signal transduction pathways even when their expression patterns are similar and they bind the same DNA sequence. A bioinformatic analysis has revealed the existence of conserved motifs outside the HD-Zip domain, including transactivation AHA motifs. Here, we demonstrate that these putative activation motifs are functional. Four members of the Arabidopsis family were chosen: AtHB1, AtHB7, AtHB12 and AtHB13. All of them exhibited activation activity in yeast and in plants but with different degrees. The protein segment necessary for such activation was different for these four transcription factors as well as the role of the tryptophans they present. When interaction with components of the basal transcription machinery was tested, AtHB1 was able to interact with TBP, AtHB12 interacted with TFIIB, AtHB7 interacted with both, TBP and TFIIB while AtHB13 showed weak interactions with any of them, in yeast two-hybrid as well as in pull-down assays. Transient transformation of Arabidopsis seedlings confirmed the activation capacity and specificity of these transcription factors and showed some differences with the results obtained in yeast. In conclusion, the differential activation functionality of these transcription factors adds an important level of functional divergence of these proteins, and together with their expression patterns, these differences could explain, at least in part, their functional divergence.

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Abbreviations

AD:

Activation domain of GAL4

AHA:

Aromatic and large hydrophobic residues embedded in an acidic context

BD:

Binding domain of GAL4

CTR:

Carboxy-terminal region

HA:

Hemagglutinin

HD:

Homeodomain

HD-Zip:

Homeodomain-leucine zipper

HSF:

Heat stress transcription factor

IB:

Immunoblotting

LZ:

Leucine zipper

NTR:

Amino-terminal region

TBP:

TATA binding protein

TF:

Transcription factor

TFIIB:

Transcription factor IIB

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (PICT 2008 1206, PICT 2011 0859 and PICT 2012 0955), and Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL). MC, DAR are CONICET Ph.D. Fellows, ALA is a post-doctoral Fellow of the same institution and RLC is a CONICET Career member.

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  1. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral, CONICET-UNL, CC 242 Ciudad Universitaria, 3000, Santa Fe, Argentina

    Matías Capella, Delfina A. Ré, Agustín L. Arce & Raquel L. Chan

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  1. Matías Capella
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  2. Delfina A. Ré
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  3. Agustín L. Arce
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  4. Raquel L. Chan
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Correspondence to Raquel L. Chan.

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Communicated by K. Kamo.

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Capella, M., Ré, D.A., Arce, A.L. et al. Plant homeodomain-leucine zipper I transcription factors exhibit different functional AHA motifs that selectively interact with TBP or/and TFIIB. Plant Cell Rep 33, 955–967 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-014-1576-9

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