Gene expression regulation

Research Lines

The team

The finding that the primary role of DELLA proteins is to regulate transcription through the interaction with DNA binding transcription factors has drawn our attention to the molecular mechanisms that underlie gene expression in general. In this research line, some of the questions that we try to solve are:

     • Do gibberellins and DELLAs regulate other stages of gene expression, different to transcriptional initiation?

     • Do environmental signals regulate gene expression through other mechanisms?

One of our important recent findings is that DELLAs promote the accumulation of prefoldin in the nucleus. Prefoldin is a cytosolic chaperonin required proper folding of tubulin, but nuclear accumulation allows its interaction with other nuclear complexes that participate in multiple processes, from DNA repair to chromatin modifications and splicing. Our hypothesis is that DELLA-prefoldin interaction might affect chromatin dynamics, transcriptional elongation and RNA splicing.

We are also investigating the efficiency of transcript translation. We have shown that the correlation between transcription and translation is far from perfect and a group of transcripts displays significant changes in their translational efficiencies in response to several hormones. The Ribosome footprinting (or Ribo-seq) technology is employed to monitor changes in transcript translation at a whole-genome scale and single-codon resolution. Ribo-seq and RNA-seq are used in parallel to identify transcripts that change in their translation efficiency during specific developmental processes or under particular conditions.

Alabadí

Blázquez

Our selected papers

Prefoldins contribute to maintaining the levels of the spliceosome LSM2-8 complex through Hsp90 in Arabidopsis

Esteve-Bruna D, Carrasco-López C, Blanco-Touriñán N, Iserte J, Calleja-Cabrera J, Perea-Resa C, Úrbez C, Carrasco P, Yanovsky MJ, Blázquez MA, Salinas J, Alabadí D.

Nucleic Acids Res.  (2020) doi: 10.1093/nar/gkaa354.

Genome wide binding-site analysis reveals transcriptional co-activation of cytokinin-responsive genes by DELLA proteins.

Marin-de la Rosa NA, Pfeiffer A, Hill K, Locascio A, Bhalerao RP, Grønlund AL, Wanchoo-Kohli A,  Thomas SG, Bennett MJ, Lohmann JU, Blázquez MA, Alabadí, D

PLoS Genet. (2015) 11, e1005337.


Genomic analysis of DELLA protein activity

Locascio A, Blázquez MA, Alabadí D

Plant Cell Physiol. (2013) 54, 1229-1237. 


Dynamic regulation of cortical microtubule organization  through prefoldin-DELLA interaction

Locascio A, Blázquez MA, Alabadí D

Curr. Biol. (2013) 23, 804-809. 



Transcriptional regulation by DELLA proteins during etiolated development in Arabidopsis thaliana

Gallego-Bartolomé J, Alabadí D, Blázquez MA

PLoS ONE (2011) 6:e23918.