Transcription Factors as Bioengineer for Tunable Gene Expression: Recent Advances and Prospects
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Informatics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2022) | Viewed by 6460
Special Issue Editors
Interests: stress; fruit development; bioinformatics; gene family; transcriptome; hormones; non-coding genes
Interests: abiotic stress; Arabidopsis; biochemistry; citrus; drought; flooding; metabolomics; plant physiology; tomato
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Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Transcription factors (TFs) are key components of transcriptional regulation machinery. The discovery of plant TFs as key regulators of plant growth, development, and responses to distinct biotic and abiotic stresses has opened up new horizons for plant scientists. In plants, TFs accompany the process of evolution from unicellular aquatic algae to complex flowering plants that dominate land environments. TFs perceive signals and switch certain stress-responsive genes on and off by binding to different cis-regulatory elements required for gene expression alteration, and they are important in the regulation of cell activities. Therefore, alterations in the expression of TF genes normally result in dramatic changes to a plant, and the structural changes to these genes may represent a significant evolutionary force. More than 50 families of plant TFs have been reported in nature. Among them, DREB, bZIP, MYB, NAC, zinc-finger, HSF, Dof, WRKY, bHLH, GRAS, ERF, AP2, and NF-Y genes serve as important regulators in many biological and physiological processes, such as plant morphogenesis, responsive mechanisms to various stresses, hormone signal transduction, and metabolite regulation. However, the potential of many TFs to improve crop quality is currently an unexplored topic. As a practical consequence, the engineering of TF genes provides a valuable means for the manipulation of plants, but success in such endeavors depends on how well the genes are understood. To this end, numerous plant TF genes and the proteins that they encode were characterized. In this Special Issue, we aim to compile the latest advances in the study of higher plant TF, with an emphasis on bioinformatic analysis; the analysis of molecular function; expression analysis; phenotype analysis; and network analysis for the description of entire transcriptional regulatory networks, and to relate this information to processes that control the synthesis and actions of these proteins. In plants, transcriptional regulation plays a major role in the control of gene expression, and a number of plant TFs are known to act as key regulators of various functions. The manipulation of a TF often induces drastic phenotype changes and alters the proteomes, metabolomes, phenomes, and transcriptomes of plants. By clarifying the complete functional network of TFs, it may be possible to predict events in the transcriptomes, metabolomes, and phenomes of plants induced by the manipulation of a gene of interest.
Dr. Muhammad Waseem
Dr. Vicent Arbona
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- transcription factors
- expression
- synthetic biology
- metabolic engineering
- transcriptomes
- metabolomes
- phenomes
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