Mutant and Overexpression Analysis of a C2H2 Single Zinc Finger Gene of Arabidopsis

The goal of this work was to characterize an Arabidopsis C2H2 single zinc finger gene, named AtZFP11, that is similar to SUPERMAN (SUP) and RABBIT EARS (RBE). No altered phenotype was observed in mutants analyzed that were derived through TILLING nor a T-DNA insertion into the exon of AtZFP11. Plants derived by intercrossing AtZFP11 to SUP and RBE alleles did not display any phenotype that could be attributed to AtZFP11. Transgenic plants constitutively overexpressing the AtZFP11 protein displayed severe abnormalities. Phenotypically normal transgenic plants that contained an ecdysone-inducible promoter system fused to the AtZFP11 gene were recovered. These transgenic plants displayed similar abnormalities once induced with methoxyfenozide. Microarray and RT-PCR analysis of gene expression in plants overexpressing AtZFP11 after induction revealed changes in gene expression of a number of genes involved in auxin, jasmonic acid, and stress responses. These results suggest that AtZFP11 plays a role in regulation of gene expression and may be functionally redundant or that conditions needed to observe phenotypic differences in the mutant plants were not provided in the course of these experiments.