ABSTRACT: The sfr6 mutant was identified on the basis of its failure to cold acclimate, and exhibits a marked deficiency in cold-and osmotic stress-inducible gene expression (Knight et al., 1999). We have demonstrated that genes of this type (so-called COR genes) are misregulated if they contain the DRE (drought-responsive element, or CRT; C-repeat) cis acting element in their promoter (Boyce et al., 2003). Micro-array analysis has allowed us to identify a number of COR genes misregulated in sfr6, all of which contain the DRE element. However, these experiments have indicated that other genes, not of the COR group, are also misregulated in the mutant and these do not contain the DRE element. We chose the three non-COR genes that were most clearly down-regulated in sfr6 on our previous micro-array, and identified each as of these as dark-inducible. We now seek to address two questions: (1) Can we discover more dark-regulated genes that are down-regulated in the mutant, and thus identify a second cis-acting element with which SFR6 may be interacting? (2) Do all of the non-COR genes that are misregulated in sfr6 fall into the category of dark-inducible, or is SFR6 likely to be interacting with three or more regulons? For this micro-array experiment, we will subject sfr6 and wild type Arabidopsis, grown in a 16/8-h light/dark cycle, to darkness for 3h or 6h at ambient growth temperature. Under these conditions we see strong up-regulation of the three genes we have identified as dark-inducible, and we see clear down-regulation of expression in sfr6. References. Knight H, Veale E, Warren GJ, Knight MR (1999) The sfr6 mutation in Arabidopsis suppresses low-temperature induction of genes dependent on the CRT/DRE sequence motif. Plant Cell 11: 875-886. Boyce JM, Knight H, Deyholos M, Openshaw MR, Galbraith DW, Warren G, Knight MR (2003). The sfr6 mutant of Arabidopsis is defective in transcriptional activation via CBF/DREB1 and DREB2 and shows sensitivity to osmotic stress. Plant Journal 34: 395-406.
