Tol Niels van, Rolloos Martijn, Pinas Johan E, Henkel Christiaan V, Augustijn Dieuwertje, Hooykaas Paul J J, van der Zaal Bert J
Institute of Biology Leiden, Faculty of Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
BioSolar Cells, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2017 Mar 30;12(3):e0174236. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174236. eCollection 2017.
The rapidly growing world population has a greatly increasing demand for plant biomass, thus creating a great interest in the development of methods to enhance the growth and biomass accumulation of crop species. In this study, we used zinc finger artificial transcription factor (ZF-ATF)-mediated genome interrogation to manipulate the growth characteristics and biomass of Arabidopsis plants. We describe the construction of two collections of Arabidopsis lines expressing fusions of three zinc fingers (3F) to the transcriptional repressor motif EAR (3F-EAR) or the transcriptional activator VP16 (3F-VP16), and the characterization of their growth characteristics. In total, six different 3F-ATF lines with a consistent increase in rosette surface area (RSA) of up to 55% were isolated. For two lines we demonstrated that 3F-ATF constructs function as dominant in trans acting causative agents for an increase in RSA and biomass, and for five larger plant lines we have investigated 3F-ATF induced transcriptomic changes. Our results indicate that genome interrogation can be used as a powerful tool for the manipulation of plant growth and biomass and that it might supply novel cues for the discovery of genes and pathways involved in these properties.
快速增长的世界人口对植物生物量的需求大幅增加，因此人们对开发提高作物物种生长和生物量积累方法的兴趣大增。在本研究中，我们使用锌指人工转录因子（ZF-ATF）介导的基因组探究来操纵拟南芥植株的生长特性和生物量。我们描述了两个拟南芥株系集合的构建，这些株系表达了三个锌指（3F）与转录抑制基序EAR（3F-EAR）或转录激活因子VP16（3F-VP16）的融合蛋白，并对它们的生长特性进行了表征。总共分离出六个不同的3F-ATF株系，其莲座叶表面积（RSA）一致增加，最高可达55%。对于两个株系，我们证明3F-ATF构建体作为反式作用的显性致病因子，可导致RSA和生物量增加，对于五个较大的植株株系，我们研究了3F-ATF诱导的转录组变化。我们的结果表明，基因组探究可作为操纵植物生长和生物量的有力工具，并且可能为发现参与这些特性的基因和途径提供新线索。
