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YFF-Yngre, fremragende forskere

Regulatory networks in plants: The role of dually targeted transcription factors for the development of cells and organisms

Awarded: NOK 7.9 mill.

Transcription factors are responsible for the translation of the genetic information into proteins and are therefore key molecules in any cell. In plant cells the genetic information is divided into three sub-genomes (nuclear, plastid, mitochondrial) that are dependent on each other. The recent discovery of a eukaryotic transcription factor that is targeted not only to the nucleus but also to plastids has raised many questions with regard to the complexity of regulatory networks that control the communica tion between the DNA-containing compartments. Database analyses also indicate that more dually targeted transcription factors are likely to exist in plants but their functions are not known. The proposed project will address some of the questions connect ed to this phenomenon by attempting to identify all dually targeted transcription factors in Arabidopsis and discovering to what extent these proteins contribute to the co-regulation of the three plant genomes. A critical challenge is the dissection of co mpartment-specific functions of the individual proteins. This will be achieved by the generation and analysis of mutants containing only mono-targeted protein versions. Transcript profiling, biochemical and physiological analyses will be carried out with the partial mutants as well as with knock-out mutants. Together with bioinformatic analyses and co-expression analyses, the resulting data will lead to the identification of nuclear and organellar target genes of the individual dually targeted transcripti on factors and will thus allow us to elucidate the operating mode of the proteins and their impact on plant development. The analysis of selected mutants under various stress conditions will further reveal the role of nuclear-organelle crosstalk for stres s response reactions. The expected results will significantly add to our current picture of intracellular regulatory networks in plants which are essential to our understanding of plant development.

Funding scheme:

YFF-Yngre, fremragende forskere