Assistant Professor Duke University St. Louis, Missouri
The Arabidopsis ARF family provides an ideal model for the study of TF function. Of these 23 members, five are considered transcriptional activators and 18 are considered transcriptional repressors, allowing for study of both activities in a single family. These 23 ARFs can be separated into three deeply conserved clades with ancient functions. In addition to the well-studied repression – derepression mechanism of regulation, our lab has discovered that ARF activity is attenuated by protein condensation and that regulated ARF condensation and degradation can each serve to integrate environmental cues into auxin outputs. Further, these TFs can oligomerize, have a conserved DNA binding element (TGTCTC), and their interactions can be easily manipulated using PB1 domain point mutations. Using ARFs as a model has allowed us to interrogate TF function in an easily manipulated system to yield broad insight into many TFs.