A Preliminary Study of OsZAT12 with C2H2-Type Zinc Finger Transforming Arabidopsis

Abstract: Zinc finger proteins are a large family of plant transcriptional regulatory factors that play a key role in plant development and environmental stress through transcriptional regulation, post-translational regulation, and protein-protein interactions. In this study, a C2H2-type zinc finger protein was cloned in the rice genome and named as OsZAT12. Bioinformatics analysis showed that OsZAT12 is 597bp with full-length which does not include introns, and its protein sequence contains 199 amino acids with two typical C2H2 zinc finger structures. OsZAT12 is localized in the nucleus and is specifically expressed in roots. Compared with wild type, the root length of overexpressed Arabidopsis is shortened, the greening rate of cotyledons is significantly lower, and the plant is dwarfish. Therefore, it preliminary implied that OsZAT12 may be involved in the growth and development of plant, especially root elongation.