Analysis of the Arabidopsis CDC2a Promoter (MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND INFORMATION-Molecular Biology)

Abstract

The eukaryotic cell division cycle is tightly controlled by a class of protein kinases. Arabidopsis CDC2a has been considered to encode one of those protein kinases because it is expressed in proliferating tissues and can complement defects in the cdc2 gene of Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The promoter of CDC2a was investigated as a first step in exploring the regulation of plant cell proliferation. We found that its transcription is started at the position 677-base-pairs upstream from the CDC2a initiation codon. To localize the cis-element for proliferating-cell-specific expression, histochemical analysis was done with b- glucuronidase fusion genes containing various upstream regions of CDC2a. Results from the experiment indicated that a region downstream from the transcription start site is required for the proliferating-cellspecific expression of CDC2a and that an upstream region contains a cis-element directing transcription during trichome development.