Key message
The bidirectional promoter of the Arabidopsis thaliana gene pair At1g71850/At1g71860 harbors low-temperature-responsive elements, which participate in anti-correlated transcription regulation of the driving genes in response to environmental low temperature.
Abstract
A divergent gene pair is defined as two adjacent genes organized head to head in opposite orientation, sharing a common promoter region. Divergent gene pairs are mainly coexpressed, but some display opposite regulation. The mechanistic basis of such anti-correlated regulation is not well understood. Here, the regulation of the Arabidopsis thaliana gene pair At1g71850/At1g71860 was investigated. Semi-quantitative RT-PCR and Genevestigator analyses showed that while one of the pair was upregulated by exposure to low temperature, the same treatment downregulated the other. Promoter::GUS fusion transgenes were used to show that this behavior was driven by a bidirectional promoter, which harbored an as-1 motif, associated with the low-temperature response; mutation of this sequence produced a significant decrease in cold-responsive expression. With regard to the as-1 motif in the native orientation repressing the promoter’s low-temperature responsiveness, the same as-1 motif introduced in the reverse direction showed a slight enhancement in the promoter’s responsiveness to low-temperature exposure, indicating that the orientation of the motif was important for the promoter’s activity. These findings provide new insights into the complex transcriptional regulation of bidirectional gene pairs as well as plant stress response.
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Abbreviations
- AVT:
-
AtGenExpress Visualization Tool
- GUS:
-
β-Glucuronidase
- MS:
-
Murashige and Skoog
- X-gluc:
-
5-Bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl-β-D-glucuronide
- WT:
-
Wild type
- PlantCARE:
-
Plant Cis-acting regulatory element
- PLACE:
-
Plant Cis-acting regulatory DNA elements
- as-1 :
-
Activation sequence-1
- as-2 :
-
Activation sequence-2
- OBP1:
-
OBF binding protein 1
- OBF:
-
Ocs-Element binding protein
- TGA:
-
TGACG motif binding protein
- MJ:
-
Methyl jasmonate
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Acknowledgments
We sincerely thank Dr. Hewei Du and Prof. Zuxin Zhang for providing the transgenic Arabidopsis lines containing one-copy zmzf-GUS transgene. This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31271506 to WZ and 31200196 to SL), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0354), the Shandong Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (2014JQE27047) and the Shandong provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2011CQ016).
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Communicated by Renate Schmidt.
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Liu, S., Chen, H., Li, X. et al. A low-temperature-responsive element involved in the regulation of the Arabidopsis thaliana At1g71850/At1g71860 divergent gene pair. Plant Cell Rep 35, 1757–1767 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-016-1994-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-016-1994-y