SRA

Abscisic acid (ABA) is an essential hormone that allows plants to respond to environmental stresses such as high salinity, drought and cold. It also plays a pivotal role in seed maturation and germination. Because of its importance, transcriptome changes in response to ABA have been profiled extensively by the plant community. Very few ChIP-chip/seq of ABA-related TFs have been reported to date. To fill the knowledge gap about how ABA works at the transcriptional level, we carried out ChIP-seq on 21 TFs from 11 different families using both mock- and ABA-treated conditions. Analyses of the resulting 122 ChIP-seq datasets identified 326,698 TF binding events using a stringent statistical cutoff. Based on our data, a comprehensive regulatory network in Arabidopsis thaliana was constructed. We uncovered determinants of dynamic TF binding and defined a hierarchy among TFs to explain differential gene expression and pathway feedback regulation. By extrapolating regulatory characteristics observed for the canonical ABA pathway components, we identified a new family of transcriptional regulators modulating ABA and salt responsiveness, and demonstrate their utility to modulate plant resilience to osmotic stress. Overall design: Identification of binding sites for 21 transcription factors using both mock- and ABA-treated conditions with mock IP of wild-type Col-0 ChIPped by anti-GFP antibody as control. Each experiment was carried out with at least two replicates.