Short communicationTranscription activation activity of ERD15 protein from Morus indica

- Abiotic stress responsive ERD15 from mulberry was identified.
- Mulberry ERD15 acts as a functional transcription factor in yeast.
- Sequential deletion was carried out to identify the region crucial for driving high level transactivation in yeast.

Early Responsive to Dehydration (ERD) genes are described as rapid response mediators of dehydration stress. Recently, ERD15 has emerged as a novel stress induced transcription factor which might be involved in mediating distinct stress responses in plants. In order to determine whether mulberry ERD15 can act as functional transcription factor, yeast-based assays were performed. Mulberry ERD15 was found to drive high level reporter gene expression in yeast which suggests it may function as a transcription factor. However, due to lack of an identifiable DNA binding domain, deletion analysis was carried out to determine the putative region of the protein involved in mediating protein-DNA interaction. Our results indicate that the region between 70 and 100 amino acids is critical in conferring transcription activation activity and might harbor the DNA binding region of ERD15.