Abstract
In higher plants phloem and xylem are responsible for long-distance transport of water, nutrients, and signals that act systemically at short or long-distance to coordinate developmental processes. The formation of the plant vascular system is a complex process that integrates signaling events and gene regulation at transcriptional and posttranscriptional levels. Thanks to transcriptomic and proteomic analysis we start to better understand the mechanisms underlying the formation and the functioning of the vascular system. The role of the DNA-binding with one finger (Dof TFs), a group of plant-specific transcription factors, recently emerged as part of the transcriptional regulatory networks acting on the formation and functioning of the vascular tissues. More than half of the members of this TF family are expressed in the vascular system. In addition some of them have been proposed to be mobile proteins, suggesting a possible role in the control of short- or long-distance signaling as well. This review summarizes the current knowledge on Dof TFs family in Arabidopsis with a special focus on their role in vascular development and functioning.
Highlights
The gradual colonization of the land through plant evolution has been possible thanks to the differentiation of complex vascular tissues that provide mechanical support and allow long-distance transport of water and nutrients
PROSPECTS In the context of the vascular system development and functioning, which integrates a large variety of internal or external stimuli, regulators are needed to fine-tune the responses to changes in the environment
We present evidences that the Dof TFs family is likely to participate in such fine-tuning of the responses to the different stimuli in the vascular system
Summary
The gradual colonization of the land through plant evolution has been possible thanks to the differentiation of complex vascular tissues that provide mechanical support and allow long-distance transport of water and nutrients. Many transcription factors including bHLH, HD-ZIP, ARF-GAP, AT-Hook, and Dof proteins families were shown to be involved, suggesting the existence of complex transcriptional regulatory networks in which transcription factors are likely to physically interact as shown recently by several bHLH and Dof TFs (Zhang et al, 1995; Kang and Singh, 2001; Skirycz et al, 2008) Some of these families of transcription factors are conserved among eukaryotes but the Dof TFs family, which is the focus of this review, is of particular interest for being specific to plants. A particular feature of these TFs is that the nucleus localization signal (NLS), which directs Dof proteins to the nucleus in Arabidopsis thaliana (Krebs et al, 2010), is an atypical bipartite NLS with a 17 amino acid long linker between its flanking basic regions (Figure 1) This bipartite NLS is highly conserved in plant Dof transcription factors (Krebs et al, 2010) and its feature allowed identifying Dof genes in a various set of plant species (for details, see below). In Angiosperms an average of 30 genes are found with 27 in Brachypodium distachyon
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