Abstract
VOZ (Vascular plant One-Zinc finger protein) proteins were isolated by yeast one-hybrid screen using cis-element of A. thaliana V-PPase gene (AVP1) as bait. The proteins, AtVOZ1 and AtVOZ2 contain a novel putative one-finger type zinc-finger motif and bind to the specific DNA sequence in vitro. VOZ-family proteins are highly conserved through higher plants including dicots, monocots, ferns as well as mosses, suggesting they would have certain function in land plant evolution. Thus, we have proposed that AtVOZ1 and AtVOZ2 function as a novel transcription factors in Arabidopsis. The Arabidopsis voz1/voz2 double mutant shows late flowering phenotype under long-days, indicating that AtVOZ functions in the flowering events. To investigate the function of AtVOZ, we performed transcriptome analysis for identifying particular genes likely to be regulated by AtVOZ, and found that the expression of flowering genes FT and TSF drastically decreased in double mutant. We also report the expression of other genes.
