ABSTRACT: We performed a large-scale expression analysis with inducible gain-of-function (GOF) lines which contain a C-terminal fusion protein of the TF of interest and a glucocorticoid receptor (GR) domain, driven by a constitutive 35S promoter. Such fusion proteins reside in the cytosol and can only translocate to the nucleus in the presence of dexamethasone (DEX), enabling the TF to regulate its downstream target genes (Corrado and Karali, 2009). In total 18 GOF lines were used of the following TFs: ERF-1 (AT4G17500), ERF2 (AT5G47220), ERF5 (AT5G47230), ERF6 (AT4G17490), ERF11 (AT1G28370), ERF8 (AT1G53170), ERF9 (AT5G44210), ERF59 (AT1G06160), ERF98 (AT3G23230), MYB51 (AT1G18570), STZ (AT1G27730), WRKY28 (AT4G18170), WRKY33 (AT2G38470), WRKY15 (AT2G23320), ZAT6 (AT5G04340), WRKY48 (AT5G49520), RAP2.6L (AT5G13330) and the control 35S::GFP-GR. To get an indication of which genes are direct or indirect targets of the induced TF, we performed a time-course experiment. All GOF lines were transferred at 15 DAS to DEX-containing medium and the third leaf was harvested at 1 h, 2 h, 4 h, 8 h and 24 h after transfer. The expression of 30 TFs (17 TFs listed above and WRKY6 (AT1G62300), WRKY30 (AT5G24110) and WRKY40 (AT1G80840), GA2OX6 (AT1G02400), GA20OX1 (AT4G25420), ACS6 (AT4G11280), MPK3 (AT3G45640), DEL1 (AT3G48160), UVI4 (AT2G42260), CYCA3;1 (AT5G43080), CYCB1;2 (AT5G06150), XET (AT1G10550), EXPA5 (AT3G29030)) was measured with nCounter Nanostring (Geiss et al, 2008). The time-course experiment gives an indication of whether a gene is putatively a direct, and thus induced during the early time points, or an indirect target of the induced TF.