NAC Protein Family

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NAC Protein Family

• Yosuke Ishida
• Yuya Hirai
• Timothy Schultz
• Ria Yagnik

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General Info

• Three different genes
• NAM (no apical meristem)
• ATAF (Arabidopsis transcription activation
  factor)
• CUC (cup-shaped cotyledon)
• have conserved domain
• NAC domain(from first letters of each genes )

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Structural Characteristics
5UTR exon intron exon intron
exon 3UTR
NAC domain
TAR (transcription activation region)
ATAF1 gene
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General Info (cont)

• NAC proteins are thought to be involved in
  developmental processes
• Formation of shoot apical meristem (SAM)
• Floral organs
• Lateral shoots
• Plant hormonal control/defense mechanisms
• Programmed cell death

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Bio-informatics analysis

• Arabisopsis Thaliana has 135 NAC coding genes.
• Plant specific

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NAC Family Tree
NAC family --gt
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NAM Sub-Family

• How NAM Works
• The Domino Effect
• Consider the Family

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What is the Apical Meristem

• Def Stem-cell tissue at the tip of the shoot or
  root that divides, and is responsible for
  increasing the plants length.

Shoot AM --gt
Root AM --gt
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CUC - Cup Shaped Cotyledon

• CUC function
• Required for boundary formation in Arabidopsis
• Loss of protein results in fusion of young leaves
  - they do not differentiate

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CUC - Cup Shaped Cotyledon

• Different types of CUC (CUC1, CUC2, etc) proteins
  result in different levels of differentiation

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The Big Picture

• NAC family proteins contain a large number of
  genes(135) that code for extremely important in
  plant development

• Due to their natural redundancy, however, it is
  difficult to find a single knockout that causes a
  significant phenotypic mutation