Professional Documents
Culture Documents
IN BRIEF
PLANT GENETICS
In many plants, exposure to low temperatures can induce the expression of genes that confer tolerance to freezing. Chinnusamy et al.
have identified a new upstream regulator of this process in
Arabidopsis a MYC-like bHLH transcription factor, called inducer
of CBF expression 1 (ICE1). ice1 mutants are more sensitive to freezing, whereas overexpression of this gene enhances freezing tolerance.
ICE1 binds to the promoters and activates the transcription of CBF
transcription factors that, in turn, switch on the expression of the
structural genes that are responsible for freezing tolerance.
EVOLUT ION