The GATA Family of Transcription Factors in Arabidopsis and Rice

Abstract

GATA transcription factors are a group of DNA binding proteins broadly distributed in eukaryotes. The GATA factors DNA binding domain is a class IV zinc finger motif in the form CX 2 CX 17-20 CX 2 C followed by a basic region. In plants, GATA DNA motifs have been implicated in light-dependent and nitrate-dependent control of transcription. Herein, we show that the Arabidopsis and the rice (Oryza sativa) genomes present 29 and 28 loci, respectively, that encode for putative GATA factors. A phylogenetic analysis of the 57 GATA factors encoding genes, as well as the study of their intron-exon structure, indicates the existence of seven subfamilies of GATA genes. Some of these subfamilies are represented in both species but others are exclusive for one of them. In addition to the GATA zinc finger motif, polypeptides of the different subfamilies are characterized by the presence of additional domains such as an acidic domain, a CCT (CONSTANS, CO-like, and TOC1) domain, or a transposase-like domain also found in FAR1 and FHY3. Subfamily VI comprises genes that encode putative bi-zinc finger polypeptides, also found in metazoan and fungi, and a tri-zinc finger protein which has not been previously reported in eukaryotes. The phylogeny of the GATA zinc finger motif, excluding flanking regions, evidenced the existence of four classes of GATA zinc fingers, three of them containing 18 residues in the zinc finger loop and one containing a 20-residue loop. Our results support multiple models of evolution of the GATA gene family in plants including gene duplication and exon shuffling.GATA factors are a class of transcriptional regulators present in fungi, metazoans, and plants that normally recognize the consensus sequence WGATAR (W ¼ T or A; R ¼ G or A; Lowry and Atchley, 2000). The DNA binding domain of GATA factors is constituted by a type IV zinc finger in the form CX 2 CX 17-20 CX 2 C followed by a highly basic region. In animals, where GATA factors have been shown to play critical roles in development, differentiation, and control of cell proliferation, the GATA DNA binding domain adopts the form CX 2 CX 17 CX 2 C (Patient and McGhee, 2002). Vertebrate and many invertebrate GATA proteins present two of these zinc fingers, where only the C-terminal finger (C-finger) is involved in DNA binding. The N-terminal zinc finger (N-finger) can modulate the binding of the C-finger to specific GATA sites (Trainor et al., 2000), bind DNA with different specificity (Pedone et al., 1997;Newton et al., 2001), or mediate the interaction with transcription cofactors of the Friend of GATA (FOG) family (Tsang et al., 1997;Fox et al., 1998). The majority of the fungal GATA factors contain a single zinc finger domain and mostly fall into two different categories: those with 17-residue loops (CX 2 CX 17 CX 2 C; also called zinc finger type IVa) and those with 18-residue loops (CX 2 CX 18 CX 2 C; also called zinc finger type IVb; Teakle and Gilmartin, 1998). Nineteen-and 20-residue zinc finger loops are also found, albeit rarely, in fungi. For...

Rice Cytokinin GATA Transcription Factor1 Regulates Chloroplast Development and Plant Architecture

“…Asterisks indicate significant differences (P , 0.0) from the wild type under the same N condition. (Reyes et al, 2004). Sequence similarity alone does not necessarily imply redundancy; however, in addition to sequence similarity within the coding region, the rice Cga1 promoter region also contains conserved regions containing similar circadian, light, and hormone signaling motifs to those found in Arabidopsis (www.dna.affrc.go.…”

“…1) also imply that regulation of Cga1 expression occurs through a similar conserved regulatory system involving input from N, cytokinin, GA, and light signaling pathways. GATA factors have long been implicated in controlling light-and N-related gene expression (Kudla et al, 1990;Reyes et al, 2004;Richter et al, 2010). Cga1 expression appears to be controlled directly by the circadian clock in both Arabidopsis and rice (Manfield et al, 2007;Filichkin et al, 2011).…”

“…The GATA family of transcription factors exhibits a significant degree of conservation between the dicot model organism Arabidopsis and rice, a monocot cereal with many memberretaining paralogs following genome duplication events (Reyes et al, 2004). In Arabidopsis, the expression patterns of Arabidopsis CGA1 as well as the paralogous transcription factor GATA, NITRATE-INDUCIBLE, CARBON METABOLISM-INVOVLED (GNC) have been well documented in recent years (Bi et al, 2005;Manfield et al, 2007;Naito et al, 2007;Mara and Irish, 2008;Richter et al, 2010;Hudson et al, 2011).…”

“…The CYTOKININ-RESPONSIVE GATA TRANSCRIP-TION FACTOR1/GNC-like (CGA1/GNL) transcription factor was originally identified in Arabidopsis (At4g26150) due to rapidly increased expression following cytokinin application and similarity to a paralogous gene produced through genome duplication (Reyes et al, 2004;Kiba et al, 2005;Naito et al, 2007;Mara and Irish, 2008). The GATA family of transcription factors exhibits a significant degree of conservation between the dicot model organism Arabidopsis and rice, a monocot cereal with many memberretaining paralogs following genome duplication events (Reyes et al, 2004).…”

OsGATA7 modulates brassinosteroids‐mediated growth regulation and influences architecture and grain shape

“…All GATA factors feature zinc finger motif (CX2CX17–20CX2C) and the contiguous basic region as DNA binding domain (Reyes et al ., 2004). There are 28 and 29 putative GATA members in rice and Arabidopsis, respectively.…”