REGIA, An EU Project on Functional Genomics of Transcription Factors fromArabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

Transcription factors (TFs) are regulatory proteins that have played a pivotal role in the evolution of eukaryotes and that also have great biotechnological potential. REGIA (REgulatory Gene Initiative in Arabidopsis) is an EU-funded project involving 29 European laboratories with the objective of determining the function of virtually all transcription factors from the model plant,Arabidopsis thaliana. REGIA involves: 1. the definition ofTFgene expression patterns inArabidopsis; 2. the identification of mutations atTFloci; 3. the ectopic expression of TFs (or derivatives) inArabidopsisand in crop plants; 4. phenotypic analysis of the mutants and mis-expression lines, including both RNA and metabolic profiling; 5. the systematic analysis of interactions between TFs; and 6. the generation of a bioinformatics infrastructure to access and integrate all this information. We expect that this programme will establish the full biotechnological potential of plant TFs, and provide insights into hierarchies, redundancies, and interdependencies, and their evolution. The project involves the preparation of both aTFgene array for expression analysis and a normalised full length open reading frame (ORF) library of TFs in a yeast two hybrid vector; the applications of these resources should extend beyond the scope of this programme.