The DEAD-box RNA helicases are involved in almost every aspect of RNA metabolism, associated with diverse cellular functions including plant growth and development, and their importance in response to biotic and abiotic stresses is only beginning to emerge. However, none of DEAD-box genes was well characterized in tomato so far. In this study, we reported on the identification and characterizat...

BACKGROUND Dickeya dadantii is a necrotrophic pathogen causing disease in many plants. Previous studies have demonstrated that the type III secretion system (T3SS) of D. dadantii is required for full virulence. HrpL is an alternative sigma factor that binds to the hrp box promoter sequence of T3SS genes to up-regulate their expression. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS To explore the inventory o...

MIKCc-type MADS-box genes encode key transcriptional regulators of a variety of developmental processes in Arabidopsis thaliana. However, there has been relatively little effort to systematically carry out comparative genomic or functional analyses of these genes across flowering plants. Here we describe a strategy to identify members of the MIKCc-type MADS-box gene family from any angiosperm s...

Several hundred Arabidopsis genes, transcriptionally regulated by phytochrome A (phyA), were previously identified using an oligonucleotide microarray. We have now identified, in silico, conserved sequence motifs in the promoters of these genes by comparing the promoter sequences to those of all the genes present on the microarray from which they were sampled. This was done using a Perl script ...

Floral homeotic genes that control the specification of meristem and organ identity in developing flowers have been isolated from both Arabidopsis thaliana and Antirrhinum majus. Most of these genes belong to a large family of regulatory genes and possess a characteristic DNA binding domain known as the MADS-box. Members of this gene family display primarily floral-specific expression and are h...

Since the time of Darwin, biologists have studied the origin and evolution of the Orchidaceae, one of the largest families of flowering plants. In the last two decades, the extreme diversity and specialization of floral morphology and the uncoupled rate of morphological and molecular evolution that have been observed in some orchid species have spurred interest in the study of the genes involve...

conclusions based on the presence of ta systems in the majority of p. aeruginosa isolates, these could be used as a novel target for antimicrobial therapy. results our results showed that in the 174 p. aeruginosa isolates, relbe and higba were universal, but parde was less prevalent. both of the flanking regions of the parde genes in all positive isolates were amplified. the flanking regions of...

The tomato transcription factor Pti4, an ethylene-responsive factor (ERF), interacts physically with the disease resistance protein Pto and binds the GCC box cis element that is present in the promoters of many pathogenesis-related (PR) genes. We reported previously that Arabidopsis plants expressing Pti4 constitutively express several GCC box-containing PR genes and show reduced disease sympto...