GLK Transcription Factors Coordinate Expression of the Photosynthetic Apparatus in Arabidopsis[W][OA]

By M. Waters, Peng Wang, M. Korkaric, Richard G. Capper, N. J. Saunders, J. Langdale. The Plant Cell Online, 2009

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Chloroplasts of photosynthetic organisms harness light energy and convert it into chemical energy. In several land plants, GOLDEN2-LIKE (GLK) transcription factors are required for chloroplast development, as glk1 glk2 double mutants are pale green and deficient in the formation of the photosynthetic apparatus. We show here that glk1 glk2 double mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana accumulate abnormal levels of chlorophyll precursors and that constitutive GLK gene expression leads to increased accumulation of transcripts for antenna proteins and chlorophyll biosynthetic enzymes. To establish the primary targets of GLK gene action, an inducible expression system was used in combination with transcriptome analysis. Following induction, transcript pools were substantially enriched in genes involved in chlorophyll biosynthesis, light harvesting, and electron transport. Chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments confirmed the direct association of GLK1 protein with target gene promoters, revealing a putative regulatory cis-element. We show that GLK proteins influence photosynthetic gene expression independently of the phyB signaling pathway and that the two GLK genes are differentially responsive to plastid retrograde signals. These results suggest that GLK genes help to coregulate and synchronize the expression of a suite of nuclear photosynthetic genes and thus act to optimize photosynthetic capacity in varying environmental and developmental conditions.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9e5ad8691e6104f6744cec8e784aafac934a1c1c

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Citations in the corpus

Recent Advances in Photosynthesis Under Drought and Salinity (2011, background): “GLK1 andGLK2 areMYB TFs known to regulate genes involved in chlorophyll biosynthesis and light harvesting (Fitter et al., 2002; Waters et al., 2009), and their gene expression in Brassica napus is altered by cold stress (Savitch et al., 2005).”
High-Resolution Temporal Profiling of Transcripts during Arabidopsis Leaf Senescence Reveals a Distinct Chronology of Processes and Regulation[C][W][OA] (2011, background): “Inducible expression of GLK2 resulted in significantly increased expression of many photosynthesisrelated genes (Waters et al., 2009), including those for the PSII chlorophyll binding proteins LHCB 2.”
Regulation of Photosynthesis during Abiotic Stress-Induced Photoinhibition. (2015, background): “…were found to influence cell-wall and photosynthesis/chloroplast-related genes, 446 while a few TFs, for example GhDREB and CRF6 were shown to regulate PSII efficiency and 447 chlorophyll accumulation (Nguyen et al., 2014; Toledo-Ortiz et al., 2014; Waters et al., 2009; 448 Zhang et al., 2008).”
A brassinosteroid transcriptional network revealed by genome-wide identification of BESI target genes in Arabidopsis thaliana. (2011, background): “Since BES1 acts to repress the expression of GLK1 and GLK2 (Figure 6e), we examined the expression of the top 20 genes that are regulated by GLK1 and GLK2 (Waters et al., 2009) and found that at least seven of them have significantly reduced expression in bes1-D (Figure 6f).”
A highly efficient rice green tissue protoplast system for transient gene expression and studying light/chloroplast-related processes (2011, background): “GLK transcription factors are known to markedly upregulate the transcript levels of photosynthetic genes under light, while the transcript levels of both GLKs and photosynthetic genes are regulated by feedback signals from the plastid [34,35].”