In Silico Analysis and Comparison of Pathogenesis-related Transcription Factor Binding Sites in Arabidopsis DNA Repair Gene Promoters

Pathogens alter defense gene responses, genome stability, and DNA repair machinery of plants. The regulation of defense gene expression relies much on pathogenesis-related transcription factors (PRTFs). Binding sites for PRTFs belonging to the families such as MYB, WRKY, NAC, and bZIP are present in the promoters of defense genes such as PATHOGENESIS-RELATED ( PR ) genes. It could be possible that these PRTFs also regulate the expression of genes unrelated to defense, such as DNA repair genes. Toward this end, this work aims at analyzing the existence and distribution of the putative binding sites of 26 PRTFs in the promoters of 122 DNA repair genes, belonging to 15 categories, of Arabidopsis thaliana . All the DNA repair genes analyzed had at least one putative PRTF binding site in their promoters. Distribution of these sites in the promoters of PR and DNA repair genes revealed much similarity. An analysis of previous transcriptome datasets of these DNA repair genes under various biotic stresses revealed that all of them showed altered expression under any one biotic stress condition. These findings justify the reason for the presence of PRTFs in the DNA repair gene promoters as well as altered genome instability in plants due to pathogen attack.