Investigating the processes that govern how plants grow and thrive is no simple undertaking. Transcription factors—proteins that determine gene expression and organism characteristics, such as how much fruit a plant produces—are notoriously hard to map in plants, particularly at large scales. Unlike animals, plant cells have cell walls, which make them difficult to open for genetic study. Nevertheless, understanding these transcription factors is vital to developing more abundant, drought-resistant crops in a world faced with increasing environmental challenges due to a warming climate.

Fortunately, recent research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) has provided insight into how gene regulatory networks behave in plants. Nicholas Hummel and Patrick Shih, scientists working within the Biosciences Division at LBL and the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute, used a gene expression system to characterize a network of over 400 transcriptional effector domains—part of the transcription factor that can activate or repress gene expression—in the common tobacco plant.

This work has allowed the researchers to both extensively study the function of the transcription factors they identified and match them to those already published. Interestingly, they noticed similar functionality in the transcription factor regulation of plants and yeast, which suggests that while plants and their transcription factors have evolved uniquely, unrelated families of transcription factors may have similar mechanisms of activity. These types of breakthroughs allow us to grow our understanding of how transcription factors determine traits in plants, which is of utmost importance as we work to improve the quality and resilience of our genetically engineered crops.