TEOSINTE BRANCHED1/CYCLOIDEA/PROLIFERATING CELL FACTOR4 Interacts with WRINKLED1 to Mediate Seed Oil Biosynthesis.

Que Kong, Sanjay K Singh, Jenny J Mantyla, Sitakanta Pattanaik, Liang Guo, Ling Yuan, Christoph Benning, Wei Ma

Plant physiology 2020 Oct

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Cross-family transcription factor (TF) interactions play critical roles in the regulation of plant developmental and metabolic pathways. WRINKLED1 (WRI1) is a key TF governing oil biosynthesis in plants. However, little is known about WRI1-interacting factors and their roles in oil biosynthesis. We screened a TF library using Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) WRI1 (AtWRI1) as bait in yeast two-hybrid assays and identified three TEOSINTE BRANCHED1/CYCLOIDEA/PROLIFERATING CELL FACTOR (TCP) family TFs, namely TCP4, TCP10, and TCP24, as AtWRI1-interacting partners. The physical interaction between AtWRI1 and TCPs was further validated using bimolecular fluorescence complementation assays. TCPs play important roles in various plant developmental processes; however, their involvement in fatty acid biosynthesis was not previously known. Coexpression of TCP4, but not TCP10 or TCP24, with AtWRI1 reduced AtWRI1-mediated oil biosynthesis in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves. Transcriptomic analysis in transgenic Arabidopsis plants with enhanced TCP4 activity engineered by expressing rTCP4 (i.e. miR319-resistant TCP4) revealed that AtWRI1 target genes were significantly repressed. TCP4 expression is strongly correlated with AtWRI1 during embryo development. A tcp4 loss-of-function mutant, the jaw-D mutant with a strong reduction of TCP4 expression, and a tcp2 tcp4 tcp10 triple mutant accumulated more seed oil than wild-type Arabidopsis. In addition, TCP4 repressed the AtWRI1-mediated transactivation of the promoters of fatty acid biosynthetic genes. Collectively, our findings suggest that TCP4 represses fatty acid biosynthetic gene expression through interaction with AtWRI1, leading to a reduction of AtWRI1-mediated seed oil accumulation. © 2020 American Society of Plant Biologists. All Rights Reserved.

Citation

Que Kong, Sanjay K Singh, Jenny J Mantyla, Sitakanta Pattanaik, Liang Guo, Ling Yuan, Christoph Benning, Wei Ma. TEOSINTE BRANCHED1/CYCLOIDEA/PROLIFERATING CELL FACTOR4 Interacts with WRINKLED1 to Mediate Seed Oil Biosynthesis. Plant physiology. 2020 Oct;184(2):658-665