Toward an understanding of plant gene regulation: the action of nuclear factors.

Over the last decade an intensive research on the regulation o f gene expression in viral and anim al systems has led to the discovery o f m -ac ting regulatory sequences, the identification o f sequence-specific D N A -binding proteins (trans-acting factors), the characterization o f p ro ­ tein dom ains involved in D N A -pro tein recognition and binding as well as in protein-protein interactions, and the cloning and sequencing o f genes encoding regulatory proteins. The tre­ m endous progress in this field is now being com plem ented by advances in our understanding o f how plan t genes are regulated. A w ealth o f da ta has accum ulated in the past few years w it­ nessing basic similarities in the transcrip tional regulation o f various eukaryotic genes, but also specific features o f p lant genes. This article collects presently available data, focusses on D NA protein interactions in p lan t genes, particularly in light-regulated and “constitutively express­ ed” genes, reports on the isolation o f p lan t genes encoding regulatory proteins, and is m eant to induce further activities in plant gene research.